Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell

As far as I know Basque doesn't have an intransitive verb "speak". If
you wanted to just say speak, you'd probably say "hitz egin" which means
"make word(s)" (but which takes a transitive auxilliary). Similarly,
tell would just be "say" with a bitransitive auxilliary (ie X said Y to
Z). The other translations along similar lines I've seen involve simply
omitting what was said, but since the auxilliary agrees with the
absolutive, ergative and dative the verb is still clearly transitive and
has an abs argument:

esan du
say-perf 3rd.abs.present-3rd.erg
he/she has said (it)

esan dio
say-perf 3rd.abs.present-3rd.dat- 3rd.erg
he/she has told him/her it

Making the verb intransitive makes it passive, since Basque morphology
is strictly ergative, so if the verb only agrees with one argument then
it's the ABS argument (that's why "speak" isn't just "esan" with an
intransitive auxilliary):

esan da
say-perf 3rd.abs.pres
(it) has been said

As far as I'm aware there is no anti-passive construction in Basque.
Many language simply make do with one word for "say"/"tell", for example
Spanish (and I think the other romance language), where "decir" can mean
either, and I think merging all three into one word/verb-root is common,
sometimes with intransitive marking of some kind for speak, etc. So
really exactly one is necessary. :)
 As for the exact difference between them: speak is intransitive, you
can't mention what was said. Say is either transitive or bitransitive,
you must mention what was said and optionally who it was said to. Tell
is always bitransitive, you must say who said what to whom. So the
difference is mainly one of valence, and it's very easy to get by
without having different roots for these things, especially if your
language has an extensive valence marking/adjusting system.

>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?
>
>(Kazakh has 3 words: /ajtu/ to speak or tell, /deu/ to say, and /s2jleu/ to
>talk, plus the compound /djep ajtu/.)
>What about other natlangs?
>
>Geoff
>
>
>
>