---
title: A wagging tail does not always mean friendly: a stiff, high wag with… — Street dogs and cats: feeding, safety and never… · tree and pragmatics
description: A wagging tail does not always mean friendly: a stiff, high wag with a stiff body can mean danger, while a relaxed dog wags its whole wiggly body. Who acts: wagging tail, stiff high wag, relaxed dog. A sentence of the lesson «Street dogs and cats: feeding, safety and never touching a strange animal»
---

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# Street dogs and cats: feeding, safety and never touching a strange animal, sentence 13

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A wagging tail does not always mean friendly: a stiff, high wag with a stiff body can mean danger, while a relaxed dog wags its whole wiggly body.

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**Who acts:** wagging tail, stiff high wag, relaxed dog · **What happens:** wag, not mean, mean · **To what, where:** danger, whole wiggly body

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Street dogs and cats: feeding, safety and never touching a strange animal» 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 (wagging tail, stiff high wag, relaxed dog), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:371-street-dogs-and-cats-feeding-safety-and-never-touching-a-strange-animal.lesson:13
# text = A wagging tail does not always mean friendly: a stiff, high wag with a stiff body can mean danger, while a relaxed dog wags its whole wiggly body.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 371-street-dogs-and-cats-feeding-safety-and-never-touching-a-strange-animal.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
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	wagging	wag	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	3	amod	_	_
3	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
6	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	7	advmod	_	_
7	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	_
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	20	punct	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=11:det
11	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	wag	wag	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
19	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	parataxis	_	_
21	danger	danger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
23	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	27	mark	_	_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	26	det	_	_
25	relaxed	relaxed	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	26	amod	_	_
26	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	nsubj	_	_
27	wags	wag	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	advcl	_	_
28	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	31	nmod:poss	_	_
29	whole	whole	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	31	amod	_	_
30	wiggly	wiggly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	31	amod	_	_
31	body	body	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	obj	_	_
32	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wag** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **mean** | present · do-support | a wagging tail |  |  |  |  | always, friendly *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **mean** | can | a stiff high wag with a stiff body | danger |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent danger=Topic |
| 4 | **wag** | present | a relaxed dog | dog's whole wiggly body |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent body=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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:371-street-dogs-and-cats-feeding-safety-and-never-touching-a-strange-animal.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): R5-strong ×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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- next →: [Street dogs and cats: feeding, safety…, 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/371-street-dogs-and-cats-feeding-safety-and-never-touching-a-strange-animal/14/)
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