---
title: A few hours, more or less, can’t make any difference.’ — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: A few hours, more or less, can’t make any difference.’ Who acts: few hours. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6, sentence 97

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A few hours, more or less, can’t make any difference.’

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**Who acts:** few hours · **What happens:** not make · **To what, where:** difference

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (few hours), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg5615:6:97
# text = A few hours, more or less, can’t make any difference.’
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	hours	hour	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	3	advmod	_	_
6	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
9	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
12	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	13	det	_	_
13	difference	difference	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **make** | can | a few hours | any difference |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset difference=Product |

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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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**Text:** «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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