영어동사 say, tell, speak, talk의 용법과 의미차이에 관한 연구

Abstract

ABSTRACT

A Study on the Usage and Meaning Differences between the English Verbs say, tell, speak, and talk

Yang, Ji Sun Dept. of English Language & Literature The Graduate School Hanyang University

The dictionary meaning of say verbs, classified as synonyms, such as say, tell, speak or talk, is as follows: (Macmillan English Dictionary, 2002)

(1) a. say: ‘express something using words’ b. tell: ‘give information to someone’ c. speak: ‘talk to someone about something’ d. talk: ‘use words to communicate’

According to this definition, say focuses on ‘express something’, tell focuses on ‘give information’, speak focuses on‘talk to someone’and talk focuses on‘communication’. All of these verbs are action verbs. With these definitions we find say verbs which relate to the meaning 'to utter something'. However, it can make trouble in using these verbs because they exhibit different syntactic patterns in terms of the complements that each of the verbs takes. Consider the following examples.

(2) a. She {said/*told/*spoke/*talked} that she loved John. b. She {*said/told/*spoke/*talked} me that she loved John. c. I can {*say/*tell/speak/*talk} English. d. We were {*saying/*telling/*speaking/talking} with you.

As shown here, say, tell, speak, and talk occur with diverse objects. As demonstrated in (2a), only say can take a that- direct clause. Tell is the only verb which takes indirect object next to the verb without a preposition, as shown in (2b). Only speak takes such words as a language like English, as shown in (2c). As shown in (2d), without an object and when there is interaction between the speaker and the hearer, only talk is used. Many studies have analyzed these differences in terms of their syntactic properties. However, it is not good enough to understand the differences of the say verbs.

This thesis claims that a semantic analysis in addition to the existing syntactic analysis is needed to capture the accurate differences in say verbs. This thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 1 discusses the necessity and objective of this paper. Chapter 2 analyzes previous studies by Gil and Lee (2011), and Lee (2011) to confirm that their analysis methods are not sufficient enough to explain the characteristics of the usage of say verbs. Chapter 3 examines the agentivity criteria by Cruse(1973), Givón(1984), and Schlesinger(1995), and these criteria are applied to the subjects of say verbs to identify the differences in the verbs. Chapter 4 examines the differences in usage, which cannot be explained by the agentivity of the subject, through the specific characteristics of noun phrases (that can serve as subjects of verbs), and the characteristics of message noun phrases centered on ‘specifics’ and ‘inclusiveness’. Chapter 5 summarizes the discussions of this paper. The result of this thesis about the characteristics of the say verbs is as follows: (a) say: ① allows the subject of low agentivity as well as one of high agentivity ② focuses on the transmission of the message (i.e. information) (b) tell: ① allows the subject of low agentivity as well as one of high agentivity ② requires a the specific content of the transmitted message (c) speak: ① requires a subject of high agentivity ② focuses on linguistic actions, and allows the transmission of simple sounds with no meaning (d) talk: ① requires a subject of high agentivity ② focuses on linguistic actions like speak, but does not allow the transmission of simple sounds with no meaning

The analysis of the characteristics of the agentivity of a subject and participatory noun phrases (subject and object) discussed in this thesis is hopefully to be helpful to further identify the semantic differences in other synonymous verbs.