---
title: A tail tucked between the back legs usually means the dog is frighte… — Reading a dog's body language · tree and pragmatics
description: A tail tucked between the back legs usually means the dog is frightened. Who acts: tail, dog. A sentence of the lesson «Reading a dog's body language» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Reading a dog's body language, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A tail tucked between the back legs usually means the dog is frightened.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** tail, dog · **What happens:** tuck, mean, be · **To what, where:** tail, back legs · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Reading a dog's body language» of the everyday 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, dog), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:021-reading-a-dog.lesson:11
# text = A tail tucked between the back legs usually means the dog is frightened.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 021-reading-a-dog.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	2	det	_	_
2	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
3	tucked	tuck	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	acl	_	_
4	between	between	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
8	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	frightened	frighten	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	ccomp	_	_
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tuck** | participle |  | a tail *not said here* |  | the back legs |  |  | vn funnel-9.3-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent between leg=Destination |
| 2 | **mean** | present | a tail |  |  |  |  | usually *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | present | the dog |  |  |  |  | frighten *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .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:everyday:021-reading-a-dog.lesson:11`.

**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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- ← previous: [Reading a dog's body language, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/21-reading-a-dog/9/)
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