"wear" and "put on"

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/11/05 7:22:32 AM, oesten at ling.su.se writes:
<< But "put on" and "wear" differ in that "putting on" denotes an action
which is rather the starting-point of "wearing". It is true that "put on" is
telic, but you cannot simply state that it is the telic counterpart of "wear".
Perhaps "put on" could be said to be inchoative or ingressive, but if you look
closely at it "put on" is not quite synonymous to "start wearing" either. >>

In the sense of the story, "put on" does seem to be synonymous to "start
wearing".  The brother-in-law's command/request jumped the inchoative step.  In
the usage described, there appears to be no way that his wife could wear the
dress without putting it on.   Both putting on and wearing are future events.  In
English, the two words can be used alternatively to convey the same intended
result -- "put on that red dress, mama, 'cause we're going out tonight", "wear
that tonight"

Steve Long