---
title: A big leafcutter nest can hold millions of ants, and they have farme… — The Amazon forest floor: leafcutters, army ants,… · tree and pragmatics
description: A big leafcutter nest can hold millions of ants, and they have farmed fungus for millions of years, long before people farmed. Who acts: big leafcutter nest, ants, people. A sentence of the lesson «The Amazon forest floor: leafcutters, army ants, tapirs, jaguars and the giant spider» of the biology 
---

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# The Amazon forest floor: leafcutters, army ants, tapirs, jaguars and the giant spider, sentence 5

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A big leafcutter nest can hold millions of ants, and they have farmed fungus for millions of years, long before people farmed.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** big leafcutter nest, ants, people · **What happens:** hold, farm · **To what, where:** millions, fungus

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This is a sentence of the lesson «The Amazon forest floor: leafcutters, army ants, tapirs, jaguars and the giant spider» 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 (big leafcutter nest, ants, people), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:157-the-amazon-forest-floor.lesson:5
# text = A big leafcutter nest can hold millions of ants, and they have farmed fungus for millions of years, long before people farmed.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 157-the-amazon-forest-floor.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	4	det	_	_
2	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	leafcutter	leafcutter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	nest	nest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	hold	hold	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	millions	million	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	ants	ant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
13	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	farmed	farm	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
15	fungus	fungus	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	millions	million	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	_
18	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nmod	_	_
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
21	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	24	advmod	_	_
22	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
23	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	24	nsubj	_	_
24	farmed	farm	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	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 | **hold** | can | a big leafcutter nest | millions of ants |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent million=Theme |
| 2 | **farm** | present · perfect | ants *= ant* | fungus |  |  |  | for millions of years | vn rear-26.2.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fungus=Patient |
| 3 | **farm** | past | people |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn rear-26.2.2-1 «NP V NP»: 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:biology:157-the-amazon-forest-floor.lesson:5`.

**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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