---
title: Tell me, and if you can prove it you shall be my teacher. — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: Tell me, and if you can prove it you shall be my teacher. Who acts: you. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, The Wild Goose and the Sparrow, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/8/22/)

<!-- 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/) / [Gleanings from Chinese folklore](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/) / [The Wild Goose and the Sparrow](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/8/) / 22

# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, The Wild Goose and the Sparrow, sentence 22

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Tell me, and if you can prove it you shall be my teacher.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** tell, prove, be · **To what, where:** me, value, teacher · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, The Wild Goose and the Sparrow. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75089:8:22
# text = Tell me, and if you can prove it you shall be my teacher.
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	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
5	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	prove	prove	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	conj	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
11	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
12	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	cop	_	_
13	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	teacher	teacher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | 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 | **prove** *a condition, not said to happen* | can | you | value |  |  |  |  | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | shall | you | my teacher |  |  |  | my *nmod:poss* | 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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/8/21/)
- next →: [sentence 23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/8/23/)
- ↑ back to [The Wild Goose and the Sparrow](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/8/)