---
title: Because energy is lost at each step, there are always far fewer pred… — Balance in a food web · tree and pragmatics
description: Because energy is lost at each step, there are always far fewer predators than plant-eaters. Who acts: fewer predators. A sentence of the lesson «Balance in a food web» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Balance in a food web, sentence 7

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Because energy is lost at each step, there are always far fewer predators than plant-eaters.

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**Who acts:** fewer predators · **What happens:** lose, be · **To what, where:** energy

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Balance in a food web» of the world 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 (fewer predators), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:030-balance-in-food-webs.lesson:7
# text = Because energy is lost at each step, there are always far fewer predators than plant-eaters.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 030-balance-in-food-webs.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
1	Because	because	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	energy	energy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	lost	lose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	10	advcl	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	each	each	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	7	det	_	_
7	step	step	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
9	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	10	expl	_	_
10	are	be	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	10	advmod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=12:advmod
12	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	13	advmod	_	_
13	fewer	few	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	14	amod	_	_
14	predators	predator	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
15	than	than	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	plant	plant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	_
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	16	punct	_	_
18	eaters	eater	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nmod	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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 | **lose** | present · passive |  | energy |  |  |  | at each step | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Eventuality |
| 2 | **does** | present | fewer predators than plant eaters |  |  | there |  | always *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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:world:030-balance-in-food-webs.lesson:7`.

**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. **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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