89 anything, though?” I said. “No. All you do is supply the manpower and the food.” Food, I can buy from
their commissary for Ford Island. What a bargain. So I told my brother Masaji. And couple days, I went down there. I told Masaji to go. He doesn’t know about too much cooking. So he went down there. Of
course, we hire a experienced cook.
5.12 Summary
Our corpus has provided convincing evidence for the following NSM syntactic configurations: KNOW Clause
KNOW SOMETHING KNOW THIS
KNOW ABOUT SOMEONE KNOW ABOUT SOMETHING
KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT SOMETHING
The following syntactic configurations were missing from our corpus: KNOW THE SAME
KNOW ABOUT YOU KNOW ABOUT ME
KNOW ABOUT PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT THIS
KNOW ABOUT THE SAME
5.13 SAY 5.13.1 Primitive Syntax
First of all, the primitive SAY may combine directly with a clause: SAY [clause]
A second frame for SAY also has one obligatory complement which refers to a proposition. There are also two optional complements, a topic and an addressee complement:
SAY [SOMETHING GOODBADTHISTHE SAME]
ABOUT MEYOUd1PERSONPEOPLE D1 THINGTHISTHE SAME TO MEYOUPEOPLEd1 PERSON
5.13.2 HCE Candidates
For SAY in HCE, there are two serious candidates to consider: sei and tel.
90 5.13.2.1 Non-primitive polysemy
Of the two, tel exhibits the most polysemy. As one would expect, HCE tel has a number of senses which follow SE tell:
AK:650 Then, you grow the taro. Let’s say, when the taro come out to three leaf, you know, about three. I don’t know, that’s about one month, two months, like that. Then I push the water little bit more.
When the taro is little bit more strong, I let the water come in plenty and go out plenty. Get about seven, eight months, I slow down the water. Then, you get about 8, 9, 10 months, I shut the water. Now, the
water come down regular only just to go inside. Kind of getting down to warm. By 11, 12 months, you can tell ready to harvest. But somebody, they get their own way of keeping.
MM:348 You know why I tell my dog was good? When the bird come up, lot of time, he stand up with his hind leg, you know. And he watch where the go. And then, you go like that, pom pom When
he see the bird fall down, chee, the dog happy, though. Yeah. You can see how he wiggle his tail and go. Yeah, you can tell, you know. But when you miss ’em, he turn back. He turn back at you, you good-for-
nothing.
MM:372 They push from one side, they go so many feet, and then they come back and they push from the other side. What we tell them, try and push right clean underneath. You not going to push and
then from this way, inside here, not push, eh? And if inside here not push, the loaders, they grumble, yo. “Ey, that guys, they kapulu. You see the cane, eh? Inside here, no stay push.” And how you can tell that
is when they grab and load, this center part, the cane stay all sticking out like this, see. Because you can tell already, they never push.
MY:1463 Yeah, they lived there. They lived there. You can tell. They get long pipe and they sitting
down, high, eh? But like us, we don’t bother. No bother. That’s their business. NC:118 It’s really not easy work, you know. See, you get the high place where floods doesn’t catch.
Of course, Waipio floods our section always catch. Get real big water. But my father is pretty smart man, I think. He just can tell when it’s going to be raining. He can plant rice so that he meets certain parts of
the year that doesn’t have storm. That’s how lucky he is. Of course, maybe he can foretell more or less the climate.
NK:953 Some, you look, they green, you know, when they grow. That’s good coffee. So, they sell by grade. They grade the coffee. Even like today, they grade the coffee, even the cherry we send. Your
cherry small, you get small pay. Your cherry all big, oh, that’s good price, that. You no can tell you going get 30 one bag or 40 one bag. Because they going send ’em down the mill, and then they going
check up what kind of coffee you get, big or small.
YA:1021 No, no can tell which is female or male, they all run alike, just like one small, little baby,
you know. I would like to propose that this tel can be decomposed roughly along the following lines:
91
109 X can tell Y
a. X knows Y about something
b. because X knows something else about this One can tel someone to do something cf. W 1987:41-2:
BB:011 Oh, [name deleted] he know because, already wha-tyou-call, one guy wen tell ’im go make
something and he see my father make eh, that’s why he tell me, “Eh, you can make this kin?” Yea, he can. “Over there go try make.” Oh, he make the kin’ with the glass. And that time just then he made the
kin’, one Filipino guy died. Ohh, he got that, he said, first time he get that kin’ coffin. He said, “You make coffin now. No, no you make. I like your coffin.”
EB:1144 Yeah, janitor. Not in the office, though. Yeah, janitor. Once, before, I work inside the
bank, clean around. The best thing, they tell me go clean the safe. So, I go. They watch me, they watch me. But from that on, they trust me. They no watch me when I go clean inside there. In the safe, where
the money is. ER:760 Yeah, the soft meat. You make ’em big until the puka, your hand can go inside, eh. Scoop
with your hand. Then when you pau, just throw down, and you go down. And you know over there get one good bunch, eh. Every day you going climb up, you eat one, drink the water. Sometime no can drink
all the water, eh, throw ’em down. Throw away. Bumbai the people see me every time climb, they like, eh. Tell me go climb, eh, they give me money, I go.
FD:281 I don’t remember. I don’t remember what year. So, didn’t take one month, and then they
told us for come over and check the house. Because was nobody in the house, they moved all the single boys out. “They don’t need a house like this.” That’s how we moved here.
MY:1467 So, they come to talk story. My dad, what we have, maybe I have ogo today, he tell ’em,
“Oh, no go home because we get plenty.” Or if I catch menpachi, plenty menpachi, then she tell me go in the back. On the washboard, get the laundry place. Put all the fish on top there so they can take home
the fish. YA:1022 I only know he plant rice. That’s all he do, he do ricing. And then, he plant plenty rice.
When small time, the rice growing up, ready for cut, eh? And then, he tell us go chase the birds away. They give us one da kine kerosene can. You see a bird over there, you whack. Banging. Hit the can, the
bird fly away. See? No more guns, those days, you know. Furthermore, there is a sense of tel takes a clausal complement as well as NP’s such as stories and
lies:
BO:344 ai neva wen tel yu da stawri. ‘Didn’t I tell you the story?’
This sense contains an additional semantic component along the lines I say this because I want you to know it cf. W 1987:286-8. The presence of this sense of tel helps to obscure the picture because it is
compatible with a large number of contexts shared by the primitive sense of tel which is object of this study.
Here SE and HCE diverge. In SE, there is no sense of tell which is compatible with direct quotations. In HCE, however, there is a sense of tel which may take a direct quotation as a complement, like the
NSM primitive SAY: BO:336 a tel am, ei, wilson, waets goin an in puhi?...
‘I told him, “’hey Wilson, Whats going on in Puhi?”’ AK:611 Yeah, just give. Waipio, all the people in Waipio, if I go fishing, you come by, I have the
fish there, you can help yourself to the fish. You go home, with fish. Everyone in Waipio same, you know. Because they don’t want to sell. You tell ’em you give the money, he tell, “No, no, no, no, you
take the fish.” Even when we used to go out on the canoe, when they come back, you reach there, you just hold the canoe come back, you get lot of fish. He doesn’t buy the fish. We had one old Japanese
man, he collects the fish because he had to make little money for himself, eh? So he gets the fish from the fishermen, then he come up peddle around the village.
92 GF:339 Yeah, I sell to other markets too. When I sell to other markets, they want more. I tell,
“Well, that’s all I get.” Then they tell me, “Damn good taro.” But my father-in-law say, “No, your taro no good, no good.”
NC:145 No, no, no. He only handles frogs. He sells out here. He buys from me and then he take ’em out and sell to the restaurants. To any fella who like buy. See, he owe me so much. Then he cannot pay,
eh. Few hundred dollars anyway. I think about 600, 700. About 600, 700 before is more like so many thousand now, eh. So, he tell, “Gee, I cannot pay you everything.” Which I don’t attach him.
So, what he has one lousy, junk Ford pickup. That’s all he get. Not even worth 100. So it’s not worth the attorney’s fee. Why should I? Just write it off.
So, we have established that along with HCE sei, there is a sense of tel which is also a good candidate for the NSM primitive SAY. Since we currently have no evidence of a semantic difference between these
two, our working assumption will be that these two are allolexes for the primitive SAY.
5.13.3 Examples of sei
