Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell

Geoff Horswood wrote:
> 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?
It's difficult to answer.  In highly polysynthetic languages, one
often creates new stems from a variety of different morphological
sources.  In Ives Goddard's dictionary of Meskwaki, there are no
fewer than 25 different variations of things that can be translated
as 'tell':  a:teso:hka:ne:wa 'he tells legends of him', a:teso:hka:we:wa
'he tells him a sacred story', ina:cimo:he:wa 'he informs him thus',
seka:cimowa 'he tells a terrifying tale', tana:cimowa 'he reports his
story there', ocime:wa 'he tells him therefore', etc. etc.  So, are
there two 'words' here, or six? The first two are morphologically
related, as are the last four.  Sometimes questions themselves cloud
the issue because of what they presume.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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Chicago, IL 60637

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