---
title: American spelling dropped the u from words like "color" and "favorit… — British and American words · tree and pragmatics
description: American spelling dropped the u from words like "color" and "favorite", helped by Noah Webster's dictionary of 1828; Britain kept "colour" and "favourite"; both spellings are correct in their own country. Who acts: American spelling, Britain, spellings. A sentence of the lesson «British and American
---

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# British and American words, sentence 8

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American spelling dropped the u from words like "color" and "favorite", helped by Noah Webster's dictionary of 1828; Britain kept "colour" and "favourite"; both spellings are correct in their own country.

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**Who acts:** American spelling, Britain, spellings · **What happens:** drop, help, keep, be · **To what, where:** u, words, colour, own country

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This is a sentence of the lesson «British and American words» of the language course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (American spelling, Britain, spellings), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:021-british-and-american-words.lesson:8
# text = American spelling dropped the u from words like "color" and "favorite", helped by Noah Webster's dictionary of 1828; Britain kept "colour" and "favourite"; both spellings are correct in their own country.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 021-british-and-american-words.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	American	American	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	spelling	spelling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	dropped	drop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	u	u	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
8	like	like	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	_
10	color	color	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	14	punct	_	_
14	favorite	favorite	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=7:appos
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	helped	help	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	conj	_	_
18	by	by	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
19	Noah	noah	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	_
20	Webster	webster	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	_
21	's	's	PART	POS	_	20	case	_	_
22	dictionary	dictionary	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
23	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	1828	1828	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	22	nmod	_	_
25	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
26	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	27	nsubj	_	_
27	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=3:conj
28	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	29	punct	_	_
29	colour	colour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	obj	_	_
30	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	29	punct	_	_
31	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	33	cc	_	_
32	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	33	punct	_	_
33	favourite	favourite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	29	conj	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=29:conj|HaikuPos=ADJ:JJ:Degree=Pos
34	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	33	punct	_	_
35	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	39	punct	_	_
36	both	both	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	37	det	_	_
37	spellings	spelling	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	39	nsubj	_	_
38	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	39	cop	_	_
39	correct	correct	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
40	in	in	ADP	IN	_	43	case	_	_
41	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	43	nmod:poss	_	_
42	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	43	amod	_	_
43	country	country	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	39	obl	_	_
44	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drop** | past | American spelling | the u |  | words like color |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent u=Theme from word=Destination |
| 2 | **help** | participle | American spelling *not said here* |  |  |  |  | by Webster dictionary of 1828 | vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **keep** | past | Britain | colour and favourite |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent colour=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | present | both spellings |  |  | words's own country |  | correct *property* | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:language:021-british-and-american-words.lesson:8`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R7-rel-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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