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In the book, Friend Zone
“And she was a thousand times better than the drop-dead gorgeous yoga instructor from a few hours earlier.”
What is “from” adding to the context here?
Well, I mean if “from” was omitted, would the meaning change?
“And she was a thousand times better than the drop-dead gorgeous yoga instructor a few hours earlier.”
I think that syntactically, a few hours earlier (or, for example, yesterday) is an adverbial element here, modifying the "deleted" predictably-repeated second instance of the primary verb: ...than the drop-dead gorgeous yoga instructor was [from] a few hours earlier. It makes no difference to the meaning whether the verb is repeated or not, or whether the adverbial element includes the preposition from.
But note that of (and probably other prepositions) could be used in the cited context instead of from. I see no reason to favour one over the other in the specific example, but in some contexts it would make a difference. For example, from the 1990s might specifically refer to things that only existed during the period Jan 1990 to Dec 1999, OR it might mean starting from that time, and including everything since then.
[answer transcribed from previous comment by FumbleFingers]
No, ultimately nothing about the meaning of this sentence would change if the word "from" was excluded. I'd say overall the sentence is more readable without it.
From is telling that the teacher was FROM the time period that was few hours earlier.
The second sentence is missing the preposition (from), and is not telling the relation between the teacher and the time. Hence it is grammatically wrong.
