Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

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Thanks. It really helps.

When I first read c("He said a funny story to me"), it strikes me as
odd, because
1. I don't remember ever hearing this kind of expression during my stay
in the U.S. (which is 10+ years).

2. and yet it's eerily familiar because back in schools in Taiwan, I was
taught "tell=say to".

So for a moment I thought c("He said a funny story to me") was also
correct. I first consulted Longman dictionary. The meanings of "tell"
and "say (to)" are very similar in this regard. So I thought maybe the
author of the book had a point.

I then searched Google Web/Google Books/British National Corpus/The
Corpus of Contemporary American English with the pattern "said a funny
story (to)" (and other patterns with "said" and "story") and found the
results are virtually zero.

My own conclusion is that "(to) say" doesn't go well with "a story" (as
in "He said a story to me"). From this, and together with the responses
from other learners who replied to the question (in another forum), I am
pretty sure this usage was never taught in Taiwan.

I actually found one example like this from Google Book("You said a
funny story"). It took me a while to realize the character was simply
quoting verbatim something the other character had said a few moment
ago. Of course, I can't count this as a valid example(I mean it has a
different meaning, and makes sense in the context of that book only).

Thank you. This is what I really need -- a confirmation from a native
speaker.

(It won't matter if it's said by me. And it won't matter how many Google
search results I provide. They won't believe me anyway.)

Oh, no, ask away, that's what I'm doing a lot myself. But I'd say to
come with the results of your searches, or just conclusions.

I just suggested you to use the better search at Google Books than the
one at plain Google. GB is quite right in many instances. Google Books
is published  books (most of them copy proofed), not just ordinary
posts over the net.

http://books.google.com

Marius Hancu

On 09 Jan 2009, DJ wrote

You're right, DJ -- it helps a lot to know the source, as it allows
native speakers to place it in context.

As for the question (and as everyone else has confirmed), "b" is the
only possible answer.  Stories are "told" (or even "related", or
"narrated");  stories are never "said".

Marius Hancu filted:

Yes, "non-standard"..."ungrammatical" doesn't live in the world of descriptive
grammar....

It's a problem with dative case, which I'm told English doesn't actually
have....r

The quotation is unusual, but I wouldn't call it non-standard.  I see
it as the familiar expression "You said a mouthful" with a dative
("You said a mouthful to me") or an ethical dative ("Flog me this
peasant") thrown in.  A little incongruous, when followed by "surer'n
hell", sure, but that would've been what Hersey wanted.