---
title: In Britain "half three" means 3:30, but German "halb drei" means hal… — Quarter past, quarter to, and how people really… · tree and pragmatics
description: In Britain "half three" means 3:30, but German "halb drei" means half way to three, 2:30. Who acts: half, German halb drei. A sentence of the lesson «Quarter past, quarter to, and how people really say the time» of the world course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time/6/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [World](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/) / [Quarter past, quarter to, and how peop…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time/) / 6

# Quarter past, quarter to, and how people really say the time, sentence 6

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In Britain "half three" means 3:30, but German "halb drei" means half way to three, 2:30.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** half, German halb drei · **What happens:** mean · **To what, where:** 3:30

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Quarter past, quarter to, and how people really say the time» 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, German halb drei), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:world:102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time.lesson:6
# text = In Britain "half three" means 3:30, but German "halb drei" means half way to three, 2:30.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = world
# lesson = 102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-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): R6-punct-agree ×1, R8-pos-agree ×1
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	Britain	Britain	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
3	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
4	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	7	nsubj	_	_
5	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	flat	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=4:punct
7	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	3:30	3:30	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	7	obj	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
11	German	German	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	Agree=R8-pos-agree|Haiku=11:punct|HaikuPos=PUNCT:'':_
13	halb	halb	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	_
14	drei	drei	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
16	means	mean	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
17	half	halfway	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
18	way	way	ADV	RB	_	17	fixed	_	_
19	to	to	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	16	obl	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
22	2:30	2:30	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	20	flat	_	_
23	.	.	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 | **mean** | present | half | 3:30 |  |  |  | in Britain | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot 3:30=Theme in britain=Attribute |
| 2 | **mean** | present | German halb drei |  |  |  |  | to three; halfway *property* | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot to three=Attribute |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**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:102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time.lesson:6`.

**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): R6-punct-agree ×1, R8-pos-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/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Quarter past, quarter to, and how peop…, 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time/5/)
- next →: [Quarter past, quarter to, and how peop…, 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time/7/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/world/102-quarter-past-quarter-to-saying-the-time/)