---
title: Tell me, or I truly will beat my brains out against the bricks.” — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell me, or I truly will beat my brains out against the bricks.” Who acts: you, I. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 2, sentence 44

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Tell me, or I truly will beat my brains out against the bricks.”

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** tell, beat out · **To what, where:** me, brains · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75089:18:44
# text = Tell me, or I truly will beat my brains out against the bricks.”
1	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	1	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
4	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
6	truly	truly	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	parataxis	_	_
9	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	brains	brain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	out	out	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
12	against	against	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	bricks	brick	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **beat out** | future | I | my brains |  |  |  | against the bricks; out, truly *property* | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent brain=Instrument against brick=Patient |

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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:** «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Project Gutenberg book 75089 (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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