---
title: «The dog's tail drooped» is not just about a tail moving down: it sh… — Vocabulary in context · tree and pragmatics
description: «The dog's tail drooped» is not just about a tail moving down: it shows the dog is sad or tired. Who acts: tail, it, dog. A sentence of the lesson «Vocabulary in context» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Vocabulary in context, sentence 9

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«The dog's tail drooped» is not just about a tail moving down: it shows the dog is sad or tired.

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**Who acts:** tail, it, dog · **What happens:** droop, not be, show, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Vocabulary in context» of the english 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 (tail, it, dog), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:020-vocabulary-in-context.lesson:9
# text = «The dog's tail drooped» is not just about a tail moving down: it shows the dog is sad or tired.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 020-vocabulary-in-context.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	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	's	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	drooped	droop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	csubj	_	_
7	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
9	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
10	just	just	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	about	about	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	moving	move	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
15	down	down	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
16	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	shows	show	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	parataxis	_	_
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	sad	sad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	ccomp	_	_
23	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
24	tired	tired	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	conj	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **droop** *in a quote* | past | the dog's tail |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **is** | present | a tail |  |  |  |  | about, down, move *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **show** | present | it |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** | present | the dog |  |  |  |  | sad *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **be** |  | the dog *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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:english:020-vocabulary-in-context.lesson:9`.

**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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