Talk:伝う

@Eirikr I recently discovered NINJAL-LWP for BCCWJ, a corpus-searching tool which can help find Japanese collocations. According to its entry on 伝う, the verb most frequently takes bodily fluid (such as 涙, 汗, 唾液, 血) as the subject, and less frequently other fluid, animals, as well as abstract things like emotion. Does this agree with actual usages of the term, as far as you're aware? --Dine2016 (talk) 16:41, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

@Dine2016: I'm not sure I'm using that page correctly, but so far I don't see anything alarming.

Given the main basic meaning of the verb ("to continue along the surface of something"), it's easy to see how many of the collocations would be of fluids, bodily or otherwise. For animals, it's also easy to see how snakes would tsutau, whereas elephants generally wouldn't :) (although I suppose an author might describe a line of elephants tsutau-ing along a road or pathway or the like).

An extended abstract meaning of the verb is basically "to transmit, to be passed along", in which case ideas and emotions make sense.

Does that address your question? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 18:42, 9 August 2019 (UTC)