---
title: Termite mounds are built from soil, saliva and droppings, with tunne… — The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds · tree and pragmatics
description: Termite mounds are built from soil, saliva and droppings, with tunnels that move air through them, and some are over a hundred years old. Who acts: tunnels, some. A sentence of the lesson «The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds» of the biology course of Mova's primary school with its dependen
---

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# The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Termite mounds are built from soil, saliva and droppings, with tunnels that move air through them, and some are over a hundred years old.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** tunnels, some · **What happens:** build, move, be · **To what, where:** Termite mounds, soil, air

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds» 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 (tunnels, some), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:biology:004-the-savanna.lesson:11
# text = Termite mounds are built from soil, saliva and droppings, with tunnels that move air through them, and some are over a hundred years old.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = biology
# lesson = 004-the-savanna.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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×2
1	Termite	termite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	compound	_	_
2	mounds	mound	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	built	build	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
5	from	from	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	soil	soil	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	saliva	saliva	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	droppings	dropping	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	conj	_	Agree=R3-conj-first|Haiku=8:conj
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	tunnels	tunnel	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
14	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj	_	_
15	move	move	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
16	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
17	through	through	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
21	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	27	nsubj	_	_
22	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	27	cop	_	_
23	over	over	ADV	RB	_	25	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=26:case|HaikuPos=ADP:IN:_
24	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	25	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=26:det
25	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	26	nummod	_	_
26	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	27	obl:unmarked	_	_
27	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	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 | **build** | present · passive |  | Termite mounds |  | soil and saliva and droppings |  | with tunnels | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V PP»: subject=Product from soil=Material |
| 2 | **move** | present | tunnels | air |  |  |  | through mounds *= mound* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent air=Theme through they=Trajectory |
| 3 | **is** | present | some |  |  |  | year | old *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:biology:004-the-savanna.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): R3-conj-first ×1, R5-strong ×2. **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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