The other mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, SAY, WANT

333

6.2 SOMETHING and FEEL

SOMETHING as a complement to the mental predicates in HCE is well-established with one possible exception, the combination FEEL SOMETHING. It is not possible to discuss this exception without also including a complete discussion of the syntax of the mental predicate FEEL. As mentioned elsewhere, FEEL has been regarded as a kind of “problem child” of NSM. Because of this, two alternate syntactic frames have been proposed for FEEL: FEEL SOMETHING GOODBAD or FEEL GOODBAD. It is this latter valence which is found in HCE. SOMETHING is also found in another NSM syntactic frame for FEEL: FEEL SOMETHING LIKE THIS. This component is used extensively in the explication of emotion terms. This exact frame is also not found in HCE, but a similar frame is: FEEL LIKE THIS. Notice that in this frame FEEL LIKE THIS and in the other simplified frames FEEL GOODBAD, the element SOMETHING is simply omitted as superfluous. If all of the other frames involving FEEL and SOMETHING have an alternative phrasing, then is the valence FEEL SOMETHING really needed? In my opinion, it is not needed. While there are numerous examples in the literature of W using the component FEEL SOMETHING GOOD, FEEL SOMETHING BAD, or FEEL SOMETHING LIKE THIS, I cannot recall of a single example of W using the naked FEEL SOMETHING. The same argument also applies to the other two missing frames, FEEL THIS and FEEL THE SAME. I am unaware of any explication where the component FEEL THIS is used. Furthermore, it seems to me that the few instances of the component FEEL THE SAME in the NSM literature could be easily replaced with the component FEEL LIKE THIS. In brief, the missing frame FEEL SOMETHING as well as FEEL’s other missing frames are unnecessary.

6.3 The other mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, SAY, WANT

Four types of complements are common to the NSM syntax of all mental predicates. Two of these complements are well-attested in HCE for all members of the mental predicates: Clause SOMETHING The complement THIS is attested for the HCE exponents of the predicates THINK, KNOW, and SAY. The last complement, THE SAME is not attested at all. We will deal with that problem later in this section. THINK, KNOW, and SAY allow for a topical complement associated with their syntax. We have found the following specific valences in HCE: THINK ABOUT SOMETHING KNOW ABOUT SOMEONE KNOW ABOUT SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING ABOUT ME SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING Although none of the individual primitives manifest every possible syntactic configuration, all of them collectively manifest most of the syntactic frames we are looking for. 334 One missing frame is the ABOUT YOU frame. Is the absence of this frame an accident of the data, or is it reflective of a serious deficiency in the combinatorial apparatus of HCE? It does not sound credible to me that HCE should manifest the ABOUT SOMEONE and the ABOUT ME frames, but not the ABOUT YOU frame, and in my estimation, sentences like the following are perfectly acceptable: 130 ai neva teosei nating abaut yu ‘I didn’t say anything about you’ The topical complement is relatively rare in our corpus, so the absence of ABOUT YOU is unsurprising. The other missing topical frame is the ABOUT PEOPLE frame. Once again, the primitive PEOPLE is giving us some difficulty. Since both the frame ABOUT and the primitive PEOPLE are relatively rare, it seems likely that this gap is accidental. The following HCE example shows pipo as a topic but this is neither a canonical nor a near-canonical context: GF:317 I think so. Maybe he learned from some Hawaiian people down here, too. I don’t know. You see, he used to tell us stories about the Hawaiian people. When they plant the taro, they plant ’em on full moon night. The Hawaiian guys. They don’t have big kind paddies like us. That’s why, when we first came to Waipi‘o, I got one place over there; 72 patches. This Clark Mills’ place; 72 patches. In any case, the following sentence is acceptable to me: 131 ai no abaut pipo, samtaimz no kaen tras ‘I know about people. Sometimes, you can’t trust them.’ I therefore conclude that the absence of ABOUT PEOPLE is also an accidental gap. Since the topic complement for THINK, KNOW, and SAY is unproblematic, I think we can be fairly confident that all of the expected valences are present in HCE. In fact, there are numerous examples of both the mental and the topic complement, occuring together in the infamous “double-barreled” configurations: THINK SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING ABOUT ME SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING The addressee complement of SAY is totally unproblematic in HCE. All of the valences are solidly attested: SAY SOMETHING TO ME SAY SOMETHING TO YOU SAY SOMETHING TO SOMEONE SAY SOMETHING TO PEOPLE At this point, we do need to turn our attention back to the troubling systematic gap in our data. There are no examples of the following valences in HCE: 335 THINK THE SAME KNOW THE SAME SAY THE SAME WANT THE SAME This does not appear to be an accidental gap since both the mental predicates and the primitive THE SAME are fairly frequent lexical items. In fact, the following sentences sound somewhat marginal to me: 132 ? ai tink da seim ting 133 ?? ai no da seim ting 134 ? ai sei da seim ting 135 ai laik da seim ting After much consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the following is an acceptable way in HCE of expressing the meaning of the above missing NSM canonical sentences: 136 ai tink daet tu 137 ai no daet tu 138 ai sei daet tu 139 ai laik daet tu While there are no examples of exactly these kinds of sentences in the corpus, there are similar sentences: BB:018 Was on the landing already and they start cutting the meat out; over there. Plenty guys– they said you like too? I say, “Uh, I no like.” ER:766 Aku, kawakawa. That’s da kine Lahaina guys more. But that time ‘opelu and akule cheap. You can buy fifteen cents, maybe forty, forty they tell that’s one ka‘au, eh. I don’t know what one ka‘au means. But they count forty, and they sell you. They tell fifteen cents or quarter. Sometime when you go over there, you like buy fish too, eh. Then when the fish come inside, you just go with them. You tell you like buy fish. How much? A quarter or half dollar. ER:833 That’s what he tell me, the boy. He listen what the guy tell me, you know, the Japanese style says, you have to count from one year. And now you gotta go back one year. I marry ’32, but just like we wen marry from ’31. He explain me. Ah, so, I like go play ball too, I tell, “Okay, okay.” ER:859 Ho, bumbai Uncle Sammy, eh, every time he like go fishing too, but he no more net so I let him my net. He catch plenty fish. Bumbai me and him come out, we come by the shoreline, get plenty fish, so we go eat. ER:898 And then when I reach over there, I take the lady horse and my horse, I run. I run, already come halfway maybe by Hauola, I change horse. I ride the lady one, I come up. And then when I reach over here by the corral, the two horse, I let ’em go. They going come home, and you going get ’em by the gate. Then the horse you ride, he see the other horse run, more he like go too, eh, so follow up. GF:309 Yeah, she said okay. And I tell okay, too. We went in front of the judge and the judge married us. Judge Forbes of Waimea married us. I never had five cents with me when I got married. Never had nothing. FD:256 You try ask that to Fannie’s daddy, my ex-husband. You ask him that. He know the living over here before. And he tell you the story. He might know the story too. Yeah. I never used to sit on my okole. I used to be a hardworking lady, to tell you the truth. 336 ER:786 Yeah, the bull, they butcher the bull. But this other bull come in maybe two year, they going send for breed. Then they look how the meat, how heavy the bone or that one. They go by the weight, eh. They look this one, maybe smaller, eh, smaller body or what. Not enough, they butcher. Every time, they pick up like that. Then us guys, eh, the boss, the chief cowboy, he train us. Train us, look this one, what the body, some big, some broad. See, the broad kind, that’s heavy. That’s da kine they like. They like because they figure get weight, yeah, on the meat, when you take to weigh. Some they look, narrow, they say no good, this bull. Then sometime us guys, we don’t know too, we ask questions. Why no good? He say why no good, because the bull, just like lean, no more weight. You raise ’em up maybe two year or three year, by the time you kill ’em, no more weight. And this other one, you look the body, broad. This guy, even small, he get weight. ER:851 Yeah. He tell, you make on the floor first. Smart though, how he make. You make from the floor bumbai you get the floor, then you like do the wall, up. You take from the floor, you measure, then you cut your board. Then bumbai when you stand ’em up, everything all right. You measure from the floor, that side and this side. Not easy kind. He teach me. That’s why I know how to make carpenter, too, little bit. The above sentences are not quite as semantically simple as we would like, but they can be explicated fairly simply along the following lines: 140 a. someone else knows how to do carpentry b. I know the same thing I submit therefore that HCE does, in fact, have a mechanism to realize THE SAME in combination with the mental predicates.

6.4 Activities and events: DO and HAPPEN