Time Travel in Text:
Temporal Framing in Narratives and Non-narratives
Anne Le Draoulec and Marie-Paule Péry-Woodley
ERSS, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail
{draoulec, pery}@univ-tlse2.fr
Abstract. This paper proposes a corpus-based study of how texts guide readers through time.
It focuses on sentence-initial temporal expressions which, beyond locating an event in time,
take on a discourse dimension via the process of “indexing”: contrary to connection, which
looks backward towards previous text, indexing, also referred to as “discourse framing”, looks
forward and provides instructions for the interpretation of forthcoming text. As a first step
towards an investigation of the impact of genre on temporal framing, our French language
corpus is constructed according to the most crucial distinction regarding temporality:
narrative/non-narrative. The non-narrative sub-corpus provides archetypal examples of text
organisation through temporal framing. Narrative texts on the other hand, because of the
interaction between framing and another major mode of temporal organisation – through the
Narration relation – resist the indexing model and therefore force us to refine the notions.
1. Introduction
Our interest is in how texts guide readers through time. We focus on temporal expressions
which go beyond locating an event in time and take on a discourse dimension. This textorganising function of temporal markers beyond the propositional level has mainly been
recognised for so-called temporal connectors. We depart here from this well-trodden and very
productive path in order to concentrate on what M. Charolles calls “indexing” as opposed to
“connection”. Whilst connection looks backward towards previous text, indexing, also
referred to as “discourse framing”, looks forward and provides instructions for the
interpretation of forthcoming text.
In Charolles’ discourse framing hypothesis (“Encadrement du Discours”: Charolles,
1997), a discourse frame is described as the grouping together of a number of propositions
which are linked by the fact that they must be interpreted with reference to a specific criterion,
realised in a frame-initial introducing expression. For instance, as regards perspective
framing1, According to X, … provides an essential element for the interpretation not just of the
proposition which follows, but also potentially of several subsequent propositions – as frameintroducing expressions are characterised by their ability to extend their scope beyond the
sentence in which they appear. Initially formulated for French, Charolles' insight is likely to
hold similar explicative power for other languages, though this has yet to be put to the test. To
return to our concern with temporal framing, the proposition(s) in the scope of a frame
introducing expression such as On March 21st, … will have to be interpreted with respect to
the time reference it provides – a time reference which is lacking in a pure binding adverbial
such as afterwards.
1
Cf. Péry-Woodley, 2000.
133
We propose a corpus-based exploration of how discourse framing works with regard to
time, and as a first step towards an investigation of the impact of genre, we construct our
French language corpus according to the most crucial distinction as far as temporality is
concerned: narrative/non-narrative. In narrative texts an interaction can be expected between
framing and another major mode of temporal organisation: organisation through the
coherence relation most closely concerned with time, the Sequence relation (Mann &
Thompson, 1988), further elaborated by Asher in Segmented Discourse Representation
Theory (SDRT) as the Narration relation (Asher, 1993).
2. Temporal framing
Temporal expressions may be adverbials such as today, subordinate clauses such as when
war broke out, or prepositional phrases such as {in | until | since | about…} 1945. The
relation between the time given by a temporal adverbial and either time of reference or time
of event has been the object of much research (from Reichenbach, 1947, to Hamann, 1989
inter alia); our focus is on initial expressions and their discourse impact.
Temporal adverbials can occur in various places in the sentence, indeed they constitute a
typical case of these mobile elements whose position (initial, median or final) has interested
many generations of linguists (cf. Bally, 1944, Firbas, 1972, Givón, 1979 inter alia). The
best-studied contrast is between initial and final position: a functional difference has been
established between autonomous initial adverbials, which as adjuncts play the role of scenesetting topic outside the proposition, and final adverbials which have no autonomy and
express a circumstance only modifying the proposition. The discourse role of initial adjuncts
has been the object of numerous studies, both in terms of its specific cognitive impact (Chafe,
1976; Lambrecht, 1994), and of its exploitation as part of the writer’s textual strategy
(Thompson, 1985; Virtanen, 1992; Hasselgård, to appear). In Virtanen's and Hasselgård’s
approach (cf. also Goutsos, 1998), initial time adjuncts are analysed as marking shifts
between textual units as well as reinforcing textual continuity (cf. "intra-continuity steps", in
Virtanen's words)
The discourse framing perspective also rests on this recognition of the major role of
sentence initial position: only when they are initial can temporal expressions be endowed with
the property of scoping over several propositions, and therefore be regarded as frame
introducers (FIs from now on). It must be made clear at this stage that Charolles’ use of the
term “frame” is different and must be kept distinct from its use in semantics (cf. for example
Fillmore, 1992) and in interaction analysis (Tannen, 1997). Our objective is related to that of
Virtanen (1992) and Hasselgård (to appear) when they examine shifts of “temporal frame of
reference” as part of “textual strategy”, but our focus is on the scoping potential of temporal
expressions: framing here is to be understood in terms of filing or indexing, whereby a
temporal FI represents a forward-looking index and organises (puts a “frame” around) a block
of text ahead2.
2
The framing hypothesis has an obvious language processing dimension which makes it a particularly fertile
object of psycholinguistic investigation. The role of framing expressions and their interaction with other cues in
the construction of situation-models (cf. Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998) is of particular interest. We do not know of
any psycholinguistic experiment addressing the interaction we present here.
134
Given that FIs are characterised as instructions to set boundaries defining a text segment,
it is important in terms of discourse processing to determine where these boundaries must be
placed. The left boundary is established by the introducer. But are there linguistic clues to the
final boundary of a temporal frame? Some answers were proposed in previous work in the
context of geographical text; they form the basis of our first section, which shows how this
approach to temporal framing applies in fact particularly well in the case of geographical
information. We will later confront this ideal illustration of how frames work with data which
resist the indexing model and therefore force us to refine the notions.
3. Preliminary study: temporal frames in a geographical text
We start with some clear examples of temporal FIs extending their scope over several
propositions, thus conferring a temporal structure on text segments. The sub-corpus for this
part of the study is the Atlas de la France scolaire3, based on data (much of it quantitative)
resulting from surveys a) carried out over specific periods, b) covering specific geographical
areas. This document exemplifies the work involved in text production in the field of human
geography: work which could be summarised – though in a somewhat caricatured manner –
as making sense of quantitative data through spatial and temporal principles of classification.
Example (1) gives a typical illustration of temporal structuring4:
(1) En juin 1992 [In June 1992], 747 500 candidats se sont présentés à l’examen, […] ; près des trois quarts
ont été reçus ; mais pour les candidats individuels le taux de réussite a été à peine de 50 %. Pour la série
collège […], 76 % des candidats des établissements scolaires ont obtenu le brevet […].
En 1989 [In 1989], tant les collégiens du privé que ceux du public ont de meilleurs résultats dans les
départements des académies de l’Ouest où les élèves du privé sont nombreux, d’Orléans-Tours, Reims et
Grenoble, ainsi que dans les Midis aquitain et méditerranéen.
In (1), the frame opened by In June 1992 contains several propositions and is closed by a new
FI (In 1989), exemplifying one of the three major markers identified as signalling the right
boundary of a frame (cf. Le Draoulec & Péry-Woodley, 2001). These markers, which often
work in conjunction, are outlined below:
- a new temporal expression not compatible with the ongoing time reference is the most
obvious marker5; when sentence-initial, the end of frame marker is at the same time an
introducer for the next frame.
-
change of verb tense is a less reliable clue. One might expect the past / present contrast to
reflect the temporal order, as indeed happens in many cases. However, example (1)
intriguingly contradicts this hypothesis: the change from “passé composé” (French
perfect) to present does not follow a temporal logic, as the second frame is temporally
anterior. What is at work here is definitely a discursive logic: change of tense makes more
explicit the move to a new segment.
-
change of paragraph is closely related to end of frame. However, it seems to be neither
necessary nor sufficient.
3
Hérin, R. & Rouault, R. (1994). Atlas de la France Scolaire de la Maternelle au Lycée. Paris: La
Documentation Française.
4
In the examples, FIs are in bold, and followed by their English translation; where possible, parentheses, non
essential subordinate clauses etc. have been removed.
5
A semantic analysis of the FI is implemented in the GEOSEM system (cf. note 6) in order to distinguish
compatible from incompatible expressions: instead of closing a frame, the former may open a sub-frame.
135
These markers are exploited for discourse annotation in the context of a document browsing
system for geographical information: GEOSEM6 identifies text segments homogeneous in
terms of a specific criterion, using a chain of processing tools assembled in the platform
LinguaStream.
Two methods are at present concurrently used in LinguaStream for the extraction and
analysis of temporal framing expressions: regular expressions and Prolog grammars. Regular
expressions have the advantage of flexibility and expressiveness for the extraction, but the
grammars, which include semantic information, are needed to calculate compatibility between
expressions. For the needs of our study, we relied exclusively on regular expressions for the
extraction of temporal FIs. As part of the development of the platform, the frame boundaries
were manually coded; Table 1 (section 4.2) gives figures related to the corpus analysis for
both the Atlas de la France scolaire and one of our narrative corpora.
Though the list of markers given above is not exhaustive, and a number of questions
regarding the definition of scoping remain unanswered7, the closing of a frame is generally
fairly obvious. One may ask to what extent this clear segmentation is due to the classificatory
nature of temporal indications in this geographical text. No default linear progression
interferes with the temporal organisation given by the FIs. This is nicely illustrated in
example (1), where the criss-crossing of time from En juin 1992 to En 1989 is in no way
perceived as a flashback. Our next objective is to test how framing functions in texts where,
on the contrary, a default time progression strongly applies, i.e. narratives. The question is
what becomes of the organisational role of framing when two principles of temporal
structuring are simultaneously at work.
4. Narrative texts as a test-bed for the structuring power of frames
4.1. First example: film summaries
Our first narrative example is a film summary8 where time progression is achieved mostly by
default through a sequence of verbs in the narrative present9, and also explicitly with
connectors of succession (bientôt, puis):
(2) Flash-back : pendant l'été 1945 [during the summer of 1945], les bombardiers américains B-29
déversent des tonnes de bombes incendiaires sur la ville de Kobe. D'innombrables victimes périssent
dans un gigantesque incendie. [...] Seita un jeune garçon de quatorze ans protège sa petite sœur de quatre
ans, Setsuko. Leurs parents ont succombé. Ils vont se réfugier [...] chez leur tante. Mais celle-ci leur fait
vite comprendre qu'ils doivent mériter leur riz quotidien et qu'ils sont une gêne pour la famille. Seita
décide de partir avec Setsuko.
Ils s'installent à la campagne dans un bunker désaffecté, [...].
Bientôt [soon after], ils manquent de nourriture. Seita est contraint de dérober de quoi manger dans les
récoltes des paysans [...]. [...], battu et conduit au poste de police par un paysan vindicatif, Seita
6
GEOSEM: Traitements sémantiques pour l’Information Géographique : textes, cartes, graphiques, CNRS
interdisciplinary research programme Société de l’Information (cf. http:// infodoc.unicaen.fr/geosem/).
7
For example: is a commentary about an event taking place at the time specified by the FI still in this FI's scope?
8
From a sub-corpus (32 202 words) compiled from two Internet sites, the television channel Canal+ and the
daily newspaper Libération. Film summaries are a particular type of narration, as they “tell the story of a story”.
But they correspond to the restricted view we take of narrative texts as mostly based upon the Narration relation,
i.e. consisting primarily of sequences of events.
9
The present in (1) is a narrative tense comparable to the simple past found in most of the examples to come.
The parallel between the narrative use of both tenses is drawn here in very simple terms sufficient to our present
purposes. For a deeper exploration, cf. Vetters (1996).
136
bénéficie heureusement de l'indulgence d'un policier compréhensif. Cependant, la mauvaise alimentation
et les conditions d'hygiène désastreuse provoquent la dégradation de la santé de Setsuko, qui tombe
malade. D'étranges taches rouges apparaissent sur son corps. Malgré les soins de Seita, elle s'éteint et il
doit l'enterrer. Puis [then] il part vers la grande ville, son seul espoir. Rejeté de tous il meurt dans
l'indifférence générale des passants.
In (2), the scope of the frame introducer during the summer of 1945 clearly extends over
several propositions, but its exact end is difficult to pinpoint. Even the paragraph break is not
decisive. The semantic criterion provided by the FI works by sending out a light beam whose
intensity fades progressively rather than by creating a frame with clear-cut boundaries. A
strict understanding of framing theory would require that the interpretation criterion supplied
by the FI apply as a truth value criterion: every proposition within the frame must fall under
the index it provides. Here instead, the initial scene-setting expression provides not much
more than a temporal pointer for the start of the action. In this case, can we still talk about a
frame?
The point here is that the fuzziness in temporal reference in no way hampers reading, as
there is no requirement for temporal precision in film summaries. We therefore need to
change tack and, in order to find cases where frames effectively structure a narrative text, seek
document types where it is essential to know “when things happen”. The obvious choice is to
turn to “classical” chronology-orientated historical documents.
4.2. Historical documents
Contrary to expectations, clear multi-sentence frames prove in fact very rare in the historical
corpus chosen10.
Non-narrative (human
geography) 56 346 words
Narrative (historical
document) 41 384 words
Temporal frames
150
129
Frequency/1000 words
2.7
3,1
110 (73%)
Clear multi-sentence
frames : 10 (8%)
Corpus
Multi-sentence frames
Unclear scope : 58 (45%)
Table 1: Temporal frames (frequency and multi-sentence scoping)
We stress that these figures are extremely tentative : the comparison blurs the fact that the
analysis of the geography text was done prior to the beginning of this study of the interaction
between framing and narration. Among the "unclear scope" in the right-hand column, there
may be cases similar to some of the ones presented as unproblematic in the left-hand column.
Our focus here, however, is the subset of frames with "unclear scope" in the narrative corpus
which are specifically concerned with the narration relation. Though not very numerous (12
out of 58), they represent the real test-case for the investigation of the narrative factor.
Example (3) is a typical example:
10
Website “La résistance allemande au nazisme”: http://resistanceallemande.online.fr/.
137
(3) Le 30 janvier 1933 [On the 30th of January 1933], [...] les communistes lancèrent un appel à la grève
générale et à des manifestations de masse, qui fut suivi partout en Allemagne. Les nazis réagirent en
procédant à des arrestations, des perquisitions et des rafles.
As in the film summary example, the indexing potential of the FI turns out to be challenged: it
works like a pointer, after which events are perceived as happening in sequence, without any
definite linkage to the temporal indication. It remains unclear in (3) whether the “nazi
reaction” referred to in the second sentence fits in the file of “what happened on 30th January
1933” (the mention of arrests and searches suggests however that these events, even if they
did start on January 30th, certainly spilled over onto the following days). Similarly in
example (4),
(4) 1923
[...] Le 9 novembre [On the 9th of November], la tentative de putsch à Munich se solde par un échec ;
Hitler est emprisonné et rédige “Mein Kampf” en prison.
the question whether Hitler was imprisoned on November 9th is difficult to resolve. As in the
previous example, the absence of any of the clues mentioned in section 3 would suggest that
the frame is still active. But there is no clue either before the following proposition, and yet
world knowledge makes it impossible for the event “writes Mein Kampf” to belong in the
frame (it is inconceivable that it could have happened on this single day). Resorting to world
knowledge, however, is not sufficient (it does not solve the question of the indexing of
Hitler's imprisonment), and it is problematic insofar as it throws into question the frame as a
structuring principle. Methodologically speaking, it takes us away from our preoccupation
with linguistic markers of text organisation. And what may be more disturbing, the relevance
of our search for a precise boundary in this type of text is in itself questionable – a lack of
relevance which seems confirmed by the frequency of such cases of fuzzy right boundary.
Contrary to expectations, the historical dimension does not seem to demand temporal
precision: a date or a time interval is given, and uncertainty remains as to when it no longer
applies.
Given that our historical examples all derive from the same source, the fuzziness in time
indexing could just be a stylistic characteristic of this particular source, rather than a trait
regularly associated to this kind of historical narrative. Whilst we have not been able to
conduct an extensive study, we can draw a comparison with reports of the same episode from
separate sources (similar in terms of chronological organisation)11. They all turn out to exhibit
the same kind of fuzziness, as illustrated in (5) and (6):
(5) Le 8 novembre 1923 [On the 8th of November 1933], ([...]), Hitler tente un coup de force, mais le
putsch, mal organisé, échoue lamentablement : seize nazis sont tués par la police munichoise, et Hitler
lui-même est arrêté. Lors du procès qui s'ensuit, le chef du parti nazi le chef du parti nazi n'en réussit pas
moins à se présenter comme un patriote révolté par les agissements d'une république indigne, [...].
Condamné en février 1924 à cinq ans d'emprisonnement, Hitler est libéré dès le mois de décembre. Il a
consacré ces quelques mois passés dans la forteresse de Landsberg à rédiger Mein Kampf (Mon combat),
[...]
(6) En 1923 [In 1923], [...] Hitler décide de profiter de la situation pour s'emparer du pouvoir par la force :
[...]. C'est un échec qui fait 19 morts car la police de Munich ouvre le feu sur les Nazis. Hitler est
condamné (seulement) à 9 mois de prison. Il en profite pour écrire un livre, “Mein Kampf”, qui précise
sa doctrine. [...]
11
Yahoo ! Encyclopédie - Adolphe Hitler (http://fr.encyclopedia.yahoo.com/articles/ni/ni_2367_p0.html) for (5);
L'Allemagne nazie (course material) (http://perso.club-internet.fr/erra/G-VIDAL/nazisme.html) for (6).
138
Example (5) leaves unclear whether the failure of the putsch is still bound to November 8th 12.
In (6), the temporal scale has changed from day to year, and it is now the temporal location of
the writing of Mein Kampf which is unspecified. From text to text, the temporal light beam
illuminates one or another point of information, and leaves others in the shade. The basic
working principle remains the same.
In addition to the fuzziness of the boundaries, another element supports the view that the
FI’s “light beam” is prone to fading with no specific warning clue: temporal indications are
frequently repeated by way of anaphoric expressions, as in (7) below:
(7) En 1938 [In 1938], après l'annexion de l'Autriche, et alors que les intentions belliqueuses de Hitler
devenaient de plus en plus évidentes, les pasteurs Albertz et Böhm, de l'Église confessante, célébrèrent
une messe en faveur de la paix. Cette même année [In the same year] fut fondé le “bureau Grüber”
[...].
In (7), the temporal anaphora In the same year refers to the period already introduced by the
FI In 1938. The very fact that the frame needs to be re-opened is evidence for the risk that it
may have become inactive13. It seems that in narratives an FI’s scoping potential is constantly
challenged by the progression of time associated to a Narration relation linking a sequence of
propositions. This observation will be further developed and illustrated in the next section.
4.3. Two organising principles: progression in time
vs. indexing through time
The temporal effects of the Narration relation in SDRT need to be stated more explicitly.
They may be expressed in basic way by the following axiom, which establishes a temporal
order between the major eventualities of the related constituents14:
Narration(α,β) → eα < eß
In a narrative text, therefore, the progression of time is realised by the advancement of time of
event. On this basis, the distinction between narrative and non-narrative text may be
reformulated in terms of the degree of primacy of event time in temporal structuring. Its
importance in narratives is clearly illustrated by the following example:
(8) En mars 1943 [In March 1943], les maris juifs de femmes “aryennes”, qui avaient été jusqu'alors
épargnés par les persécutions, furent victimes d'une razzia. Le jour même [That very day], des milliers
de femmes se rassemblèrent devant la prison où étaient emprisonnés leurs maris, et protestèrent pendant
des heures, jusqu'à ce que les SS, qui n'osèrent pas tirer avec leurs mitrailleuses sur la foule de femmes,
libèrent les prisonniers.
12
Only the information given in (4) tells us that this is not the case (putsch failure on November 9th).
Conversely, (5) tells us that “Hitler writes Mein Kampf” in example (4), despite being placed under the rubric
1923, happens in reality in 1924 (in (5): Hitler writes Mein Kampf during his period of imprisonment, from
Feburary to December 1924). So in (4) even the strong chronological structuring via year rubrics (which could
be expected to be stronger than frames) gives in to the thematic association between events: the writing of Mein
Kampf as directly linked to Hitler's imprisonment. This competition between temporal scope and events will be
developed below as regards frames.
13
The question of temporal anaphora should be approached in relation to theories dealing with the more general
question of cognitive activation of referents, such as Centering Theory (Walker et al, 1998). This would warrant
further research; at present however these models have not focussed on scene-setting expressions.
14
SDRT hypothesises that any constituent K (representation of a proposition) describes at least one eventuality,
and that one of these, noted eK, is described as the main eventuality. Within the bounds of this study,
eventualities are assimilated with events – as our narratives are only concerned with events.
139
Example (8) is a case where, instead of referring to the previous temporal indication (In
March 1943), the temporal anaphora (That very day) refers to the time of the preceding event
(were victims of a raid [at time t]). This is made clear by the change of granularity in time t –
from month to day.
It is becoming more and more obvious that when a competition exists, as here in
narratives, between two modes of temporal organisation – static indexing via temporal frames
vs. progression of time via the Narration relation between events –, frames are definitely not
dominant. They are affected by this competition in a way which questions the status of FIs
and compels us to tackle definitional problems within the Discourse Framing hypothesis: does
the definition of a frame demand that the right boundary be precisely identifiable? If it does
not, we can consider that we are in the presence of “weak frames”. Yet the notion of “weak
frame” is problematic as the interpretation constraints given by a frame are supposed to
override the default inferences (cf. Charolles, 1997). If indeed frames must have clear right
boundaries, this leads to a re-interpretation of the role of initial temporal expressions in
narratives, whereby they are seen more as pointers, i.e. as shift markers in the sense of
Virtanen (1992) and Hasselgård (to appear), but with the additional notion of forward-looking
reading instruction (with unspecified scope).
This role as a pointer appears quite remarkably in the following kind of configuration:
(9) En 1933 [In 1933], il [Klaus Mann] fonda à Amsterdam la revue antinazie “Die Sammlung”. Il sillonna
l'Europe pour mobiliser les intellectuels contre le fascisme, donna des conférences, écrivit des articles
virulents contre le régime hitlérien, notamment dans le “Pariser Tageblatt”, journal des Allemands
antinazis en France, et collabora au cabaret satirique dirigé par sa sœur Erika, “Die Pfeffermühle” (Le
Moulin à Poivre). En 1938 [In 1938], il se rendit en Espagne pour faire des reportages sur la guerre
civile ; il prit parti pour les Républicains dans ses articles très polémiques.
The succession of dates leads one to expect that all the events before the second date are
indexed by the first. But the nature of these events makes this interpretation unlikely: K.
Mann’s travels around Europe, his various writings, certainly extend over the years. There is a
tension between the framing effect, which favours an integration of the different actions
following In 1933 under that date, and the effect linked to narrative progression. The dates
work here as echoing pointers for key moments chosen as such by the author (not every event
is dated).
The comparison with our geographical corpus throws further light on the difference in the
way frames function in narrative vs. non-narrative texts. Given that dates in the Atlas de la
France Scolaire work as a principle of classification, sequences of dates organise the textual
matter in the expected way, whereby all propositions between two dates are indexed by the
first. Temporal frames are not challenged by another form of temporal organisation: in a
human geography text, a succession of dates is not to be read as a chronology, but
corresponds to the comparison or contrast between sets of events grouped under a temporal
flag. In archetypal fashion, each new date functions as an end of frame boundary marker.
5. Conclusion
We have proposed an evaluation of the notion of temporal framing as a mode of textual
organisation and shown its dependence on genre, more precisely on the narrative / nonnarrative dimension. Whereas our non-narrative corpus provides an archetypal illustration of
temporal framing, our narrative corpus constitutes a test case for such indexing via a temporal
140
criterion. The presence of a strong competing organisation principle – progression of time via
the relation of Narration - leads to a situation where the scope of the interpretation criterion is
no longer regulated by the clues identified for non-narratives. The very fact that one has to
resort to world knowledge to decide whether or not an event is within the frame exemplifies
this loss of structuring potential.
On a more general level, the competition can be seen as taking place between indexing
and connection. Though in this study we have mostly considered default cases of connection
(Narration relation expressed by sequences of narrative tenses), it can also be realised by
explicit temporal connectors (such as soon after and then in (2)). The interaction between
such connectors and frame introducers deserves further investigation.
Finally, it must be stressed that the notion of discourse framing, even if questioned by the
study we present here, remains an extremely valuable insight. It is the competition between
two organising principles in our data that casts some doubt on the strength of framing, making
these data problematic for the theory. The problems posed by time framing in narratives
would not occur, for example, with spatial framing. On the other hand, spatial framing would
similarly enter into competition with spatial organisation in texts such as route descriptions.
Such cases of competing organising principles, while challenging the theory, lead to a better
understanding of the interaction between the diverse principles underlying discourse
organisation.
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