---
title: In Britain and Ireland "half four" is short for half past four, 4:30… — Reading the clock: hours, minutes and the two ha… · tree and pragmatics
description: In Britain and Ireland "half four" is short for half past four, 4:30; it does not mean half of four. Who acts: half four, half. A sentence of the lesson «Reading the clock: hours, minutes and the two hands» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of e
---

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# Reading the clock: hours, minutes and the two hands, sentence 13

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In Britain and Ireland "half four" is short for half past four, 4:30; it does not mean half of four.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** half four, half · **What happens:** be, not mean · **To what, where:** Britain, half

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Reading the clock: hours, minutes and the two hands» 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 (half four, half), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:101-reading-the-clock-hours-minutes-hands.lesson:13
# text = In Britain and Ireland "half four" is short for half past four, 4:30; it does not mean half of four.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 101-reading-the-clock-hours-minutes-hands.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 ×3, R7-rel-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	Ireland	Ireland	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=2:punct
6	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	7	compound	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=7:det:predet|HaikuPos=DET:PDT:NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac|PronType=Ind
7	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nsubj	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=10:punct
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	10	obl	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=14:det:predet|HaikuPos=DET:PDT:NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac|PronType=Ind
13	past	past	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
16	4:30	4:30	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	14	flat	_	_
17	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	21	punct	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
19	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	21	aux	_	_
20	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	21	advmod	_	_
21	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	parataxis	_	_
22	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	21	obj	_	_
23	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	22	nmod	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=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 | **is** | present | half four |  |  | Britain and Ireland |  | for past four; half *obl*; short *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **mean** | present · do-support | half | half of four |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent half=Topic |

<!-- .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:101-reading-the-clock-hours-minutes-hands.lesson:13`.

**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 ×3, R7-rel-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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