Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell

On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 12:23:46PM -0500, Geoff Horswood wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was thinking about the English words "speak", "say", "tell" (and "talk"),
> and trying to quantify the exact difference between them.
>
> Specifically, I was wondering whether all the words were strictly necessary
> in a language, or whether you could postulate a language with only one word
> meaning speak, say, tell or talk, depending on context.  How realistic is
> this?
[...]
> What about other natlangs?
[...]

In my L1, there's really only one word for all 4 meanings: _kong2_
(the 2 is the tone number [1]). By itself, _kong2_ means "to say". "To
speak" or "to talk" is _kong2 ua3_ [2], which is literally "to say
words". "To tell" is simply indicated by adding the person being told,
e.g.:
	ka3 wa1 kong2
	to  me  say
	"Tell me"; lit., "speak to me".


ObConlang: Tatari Faran, unlike my L1, distinguishes between "speak"
and "talk":

_tsana ... aniin_ - to speak, to say, to tell; usually referring to a
specific instance of speaking.

_sisita ... isin_ - to talk, to chat, to gossip; usually referring to
background chatting in a crowd where the actual contents of the speech
are unknown or irrelevant.


[1] Tone 2 is pronounced as 35 (high rising) in my idiolect, but
elsewhere (such as in Taiwan) it is pronounced 52 (high falling). The
latter is more "authentic" in the sense that it's the original
pronunciation in Fuqian province.

[2] Tone 3 is 21 (low falling).


T

(PS. My sig-generator Perl script seems to have picked the keyword in
the recent thread, in a sudden bout of cognizance.)

--
English has the lovely word "defenestrate", meaning "to execute by throwing
someone out a window", or more recently "to remove Windows from a computer
and replace it with something useful". :-) -- John Cowan