---
title: A loose wide tail wag usually means a happy dog, but a stiff high wa… — Wolves and dogs · tree and pragmatics
description: A loose wide tail wag usually means a happy dog, but a stiff high wag can mean the dog is tense. Who acts: loose wide tail wag, stiff high wag, dog. A sentence of the lesson «Wolves and dogs» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Wolves and dogs, sentence 13

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A loose wide tail wag usually means a happy dog, but a stiff high wag can mean the dog is tense.

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**Who acts:** loose wide tail wag, stiff high wag, dog · **What happens:** mean, be · **To what, where:** happy dog · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Wolves and dogs» of the biology 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 (loose wide tail wag, stiff high wag, dog), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:024-wolves-and-dogs.lesson:13
# text = A loose wide tail wag usually means a happy dog, but a stiff high wag can mean the dog is tense.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 024-wolves-and-dogs.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): no change
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
2	loose	loose	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
3	wide	wide	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
4	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	compound	_	_
5	wag	wag	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
6	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
12	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
14	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
15	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	wag	wag	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	nsubj	_	_
21	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	22	cop	_	_
22	tense	tense	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	ccomp	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present | a loose wide tail wag | a happy dog |  |  |  | usually *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dog=Topic |
| 2 | **mean** | can | a stiff high wag |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present | the dog |  |  |  |  | tense *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:biology:024-wolves-and-dogs.lesson:13`.

**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): no change. **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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