---
title: It was really a pretty house, and in it were a happy pair. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was really a pretty house, and in it were a happy pair. Who acts: house. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snowdrop, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Snowdrop, sentence 139

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It was really a pretty house, and in it were a happy pair.

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**Who acts:** house · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** pretty house, happy pair

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Snowdrop. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (house), 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:pg27200:177:139
# text = It was really a pretty house, and in it were a happy pair.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	happy	happy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	pair	pair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | house | a pretty house and a happy pair |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | house |  |  | a happy pair |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «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.

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