---
title: A growl, a curled lip or bared teeth are warnings that mean «back of… — Reading a dog's body language · tree and pragmatics
description: A growl, a curled lip or bared teeth are warnings that mean «back off». Who acts: growl, warnings. 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 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A growl, a curled lip or bared teeth are warnings that mean «back off».

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** growl, warnings · **What happens:** curl, bare, be, mean · **To what, where:** warnings

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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 (growl, warnings), 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:15
# text = A growl, a curled lip or bared teeth are warnings that mean «back off».
# 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): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	growl	growl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=2:punct
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	curled	curl	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	amod	_	_
6	lip	lip	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=11:nsubj
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	bared	bare	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	amod	_	_
9	teeth	tooth	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	warnings	warning	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	0	root	_	_
12	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
13	mean	mean	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	acl:relcl	_	_
14	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	_
15	back	back	ADV	RB	_	13	ccomp	_	_
16	off	off	ADP	IN	_	15	compound:prt	_	_
17	»	»	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	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 | **curl** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn coil-9.6-1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **bare** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | present | a growl and a curled lip or bared teeth | warnings |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **mean** | present | warnings |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .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:15`.

**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, R6-punct-agree ×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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