Roleset confess.01 Verbnet Class: 1 "mode of speaking":

Roles:

Arg0:speaker


Arg1:utterance


Arg2:hearer

Examples:

person: third tense: present aspect: ns voice: active form: full


standard (-)
''Mr. Sohmer confesses that it was partly in response to such attitudes that he is now ``a dweller on one of the two islands off the coast of America.''
Arg0:	Mr. Sohmer
REL:	confesses
Arg1:	it was partly in response to such attitudes that he is now ``a dweller on one of the two islands off the coast of America

person: third tense: present aspect: ns voice: active form: full


inverted (-)
``When I saw the Lexus sales projections, I got worried,'' confesses *trace* Takashi Oka, who led the Infiniti development team.
REL:	confesses
Arg1:	*trace* -> When I saw the Lexus sales projections, I got worried
Arg0:	Takashi Oka, who led the Infiniti development team

person: third tense: present aspect: ns voice: active form: full


prepositional utterance (-)
During time off, Mr. Roman tends to his garden; Mr. Phillips confesses to a fondness for, among other things, fast cars and planes.
Arg0:	Mr. Phillips
REL:	confesses
Arg1-to:	a fondness for, among other things, fast cars and planes

Last example is effectively 'admit' rather than 'speak', but since that vn class (29.5) takes the same PAS as 'say' I've merged the two sets. It does make disambiguation a little more interesting, though.