---
title: With a clock face people often say trois heures moins vingt (twenty… — Telling the time · tree and pragmatics
description: With a clock face people often say trois heures moins vingt (twenty to three); with a digital clock deux heures quarante (2:40) is fine too. Who acts: people, deux heures. A sentence of the lesson «Telling the time» of the french course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragm
---

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# Telling the time, sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
With a clock face people often say trois heures moins vingt (twenty to three); with a digital clock deux heures quarante (2:40) is fine too.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** people, deux heures · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** trois · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Telling the time» of the french 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 (people, deux heures), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:french:012-telling-the-time.lesson:15
# text = With a clock face people often say trois heures moins vingt (twenty to three); with a digital clock deux heures quarante (2:40) is fine too.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = french
# lesson = 012-telling-the-time.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 ×2
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	clock	clock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
5	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
6	often	often	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	say	say	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	trois	trois	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	7	obj	_	_
9	heures	heure	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	8	flat:foreign	_	_
10	moins	moins	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	8	flat:foreign	_	_
11	vingt	vingt	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	8	flat:foreign	_	_
12	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	13	punct	_	_
13	twenty	twenty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	appos	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nmod	_	_
16	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	13	punct	_	_
17	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=23:det
20	digital	digital	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=23:amod
21	clock	clock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	_
22	deux	deux	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	compound	_	_
23	heures	heure	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	29	nsubj	_	_
24	quarante	quarante	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	23	conj	_	_
25	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	26	punct	_	_
26	2:40	2:40	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	23	appos	_	_
27	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	26	punct	_	_
28	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	29	cop	_	_
29	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	parataxis	_	_
30	too	too	ADV	RB	_	29	advmod	_	_
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	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 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | people | trois |  |  |  | with a clock face; often *property* | vn pronounce-29.3.1 «NP V NP PP.manner»: agent=Agent trois=Theme with face=Manner |
| 2 | **is** | present | deux heures |  |  |  |  | fine *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:french:012-telling-the-time.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 ×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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