---
title: A tail held high and stiff, even if it wags, can mean the dog is ten… — Reading a dog's body language · tree and pragmatics
description: A tail held high and stiff, even if it wags, can mean the dog is tense or excited, not friendly. Who acts: body, 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/21-reading-a-dog/12/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [Reading a dog's body language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/21-reading-a-dog/) / 12

# Reading a dog's body language, sentence 12

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A tail held high and stiff, even if it wags, can mean the dog is tense or excited, not friendly.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** body, tail, dog · **What happens:** hold, wag, mean, be, not be · **To what, where:** tail · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (body, 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:12
# text = A tail held high and stiff, even if it wags, can mean the dog is tense or excited, not friendly.
# 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): R1-cc-next ×1, R5-strong ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	tail	tail	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
3	held	hold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	acl	_	_
4	high	high	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=4:cc
6	stiff	stiff	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	even	even	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	wags	wag	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	advcl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=3:advcl
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	mean	mean	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	dog	dog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
18	tense	tense	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	ccomp	_	_
19	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	excited	excited	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	conj	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	23	punct	_	_
22	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	23	advmod	_	_
23	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	conj	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=assert

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | participle |  | a tail *not said here* |  |  |  | high *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **wag** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | body |  |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **mean** | can | a tail |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** | present | the dog |  |  |  |  | tense *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **be** |  | the dog *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 6 | **not** **be** |  | the dog *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:12`.

**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): R1-cc-next ×1, 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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Reading a dog's body language, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/21-reading-a-dog/11/)
- next →: [Reading a dog's body language, 13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/21-reading-a-dog/13/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/21-reading-a-dog/)