Words of Speaking and Saying in the Indo-European Languages

Carl Darling Buck was – and still is – a well respected scholar of comparative linguistics. Primarily a scholar of classical language, he published on Italic and Greek dialects and is most famous for his Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages and Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian. In this essay he explores verbs of speaking, which are an important class of verbs due to the complicated clauses they introduce. In addition, there is greater variation among Indo-European words of speaking than there is in other verbs, suggesting a range of original shades of meaning. Buck examines a long list of roots and teases out the semantic differences among them, an exercise of interest to Classicists and Linguists alike.