Verbs of speaking in East Cree
This article builds on the work of Fillmore (1977, 1982) and Johnson and Fillmore (2000) by analyzing the semantic frame of communication in East Cree while identifying the frame elements present in verbs of speech of that language. The study demonstrates that East Cree grammatical morphology encodes the Speaker, the Addressee, the Message and the Topic. In complex verbs, a lexical suffix (called a concrete final) refers to the communication event, while the verbal root encodes the Code, the state of the Addressee, the Message, and Manner.