---
title: They were gray, gloomy days, and in the house whose windows were not… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They were gray, gloomy days, and in the house whose windows were not glass, twilight and dark nights reigned in turns. Who acts: merchants, windows, dark nights. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap, with its dependency tree and the pr
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/128/179/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Old Bachelor's Nightcap](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/128/) / 179

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap, sentence 179

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They were gray, gloomy days, and in the house whose windows were not glass, twilight and dark nights reigned in turns.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** merchants, windows, dark nights · **What happens:** be, not be, reign · **To what, where:** glass, house, turns

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merchants, windows, dark nights), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:128:179
# text = They were gray, gloomy days, and in the house whose windows were not glass, twilight and dark nights reigned in turns.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	gray	gray	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	gloomy	gloomy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
12	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	windows	window	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
14	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
15	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	16	advmod	_	_
16	glass	glass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
18	twilight	twilight	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
20	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	nights	night	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	nsubj	_	_
22	reigned	reign	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	conj	_	_
23	in	in	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
24	turns	turn	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	22	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | merchants *= merchant* |  |  |  | day | gray *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **is a** | past | glass's windows | glass |  | the house |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **reign** | past | dark nights |  |  | turns |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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 -->

**Text:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 178](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/128/178/)
- next →: [sentence 180](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/128/180/)
- ↑ back to [The Old Bachelor's Nightcap](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/128/)