Talk:start by saying

start by saying
"To make an opening remark in a speech or document that prefaces what is to come." Yes, but this seems like NISOP. We can find a lot of texts where somebody concludes by saying, or where they start by asking. Equinox ◑ 00:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the possibly idiomatic interpretation of this makes more sense as part of "let me start by saying" (See the 5000 raw bgc hits), which is an instance of the discourse directives you refer to, many of which are in turn instances of the "let me V" construction. The alternative "let us start by V-ing" may have lead the contributor to attempt this as a lemma. One can also look at this as in instance of a "VP by VP[[troponym]]-ing" construction. IMO, the issue is how to present appropriate representatives of the constructions or whether to leave it to the individual words.
 * It is also true that "start" can be replaced by any of several synonyms and "saying" can be replaced by "telling", "offering", "reminding", "encouraging", "thanking", "describing", "denying" or any of the other speech acts that may and often do come at the beginning of a speech.
 * I don't think the NISoP uses of this construction warrant having a separate entry unless we are going to adopt a "construction grammar" approach to multi-word entries, for which we would be breaking new intellectually challenging lexicographic ground, a brave stance indeed for an entity relying entirely on amateurs, many not linguistic professionals or believers in "construction grammar". DCDuring TALK 13:09, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:27, 20 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Seems pretty straight forward to me. ---&gt; Tooironic 14:41, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 00:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)