Roleset say.01 Verbnet Class: 1 "say":

Roles:

Arg0:Sayer


Arg1:Utterance


Arg2:Hearer


Arg3:Attributive

Examples:

Transitive (-)
A Lorillard spokeswoman said "This is an old story."
Arg0:	A Lorillard spokeswoman
REL:	said
Arg1:	"This is an old story"




Fronted (-)
Kent cigarettes were sold, the company said *trace*
Arg0:	the company
REL:	said
Arg1:	*trace* -> Kent cigarettes were sold*




Inverted (-)
What matters is what advertisers will pay, said *trace* Newsweek's chairman
REL:	said
Arg1:	*trace* -> What matters is what advertisers will pay
Arg0:	Newsweek's chairman




Split (-)
"What you have to understand," said John, "is that Philly literally stinks."
Arg1:	["What you have to understand"] ["is that Philly literally stinks"]
REL:	said
Arg0:	John




with listener (-)
John said to Mary: "you're an idiot."
Arg0:	John
REL:	said
Arg2-to:	to Mary
Arg1:	"you're an idiot"




Weird, attributive usage: (-)
"Well that's odd," said John of the disappearance of his nose.
Arg1:	"Well that's odd"
REL:	said
Arg0:	John
Arg3-of:	of the disappearance of his nose




As discourse-level event (-)
Let's assume someone, say John, has been killed.
REL:	say
Arg1:	John




split utterance (-)
John is said to be an idiot.
Arg1:	[John][to be an idiot]
REL:	said

Note: In most cases Treebank suggests an S-BAR as the object of "say"; PReditor selects the S inside the S-BAR as the Arg1. I feel it really should be the S-BAR, because of the cases like "John said THAT he loved Mary" where the S-BAR is selected as Arg1, but in actual usage the complementizer is usually dropped. But since it would slow down throughput *enormously* to retag all of these cases, we'll accept what PReditor selects in both cases (with and without complementizer).