Jose Carillo's Forum

ESSAYS BY JOSE CARILLO

On this webpage, Jose A. Carillo shares with English users, learners, and teachers a representative selection of his essays on the English language, particularly on its uses and misuses. One essay will be featured every week, and previously featured essays will be archived in the forum.

Going back to the basic forms of reported speech

This week, in the Forum’s “You Asked Me This Question” section, I discuss how third conditional sentences in directly quoted statements behave when presented as reported speech. That rather advanced grammar discussion is the offshoot of a question raised by Forum member Pipes about his doubtful tense usage in a reported-speech sentence. It was a tough question that, in effect, asked: “Do conditional sentences backshift in reported speech?”

As the Forum hasn’t taken up the basics of these aspects of English grammar extensively yet, I realize that the terms “reported speech,” “conditional sentences,” and “backshift” may not ring a bell to some Forum members and guests. By way of backgrounder, therefore, I have posted the essay below, “Dealing Properly with Reported Speech,” in this week’s edition of the Forum. Written for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in September 2008, this essay discusses the mechanisms involved in converting directly quoted utterances in the various simple tenses into reported speech. I trust that you will find it a welcome introduction to this admittedly challenging grammar subject. (May 8, 2011)

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Dealing properly with reported speech

One of the trickiest aspects of English grammar is dealing with reported speech, which is also called indirect speech. Basically, we are taught that when the reporting verb is in the past tense, the operative verb of the reported utterance takes one step back from the present into the past. For instance, assume that an officemate by the name of Jennifer told us this yesterday: “I am unhappy with my job.” Today, when we report that remark to somebody else, we need to change the verb in the utterance from simple present to simple past and say: “Yesterday, Jennifer said she was unhappy with her job.”

We must keep in mind, though, that it’s not only the operative verb in the utterance that changes in reported speech. The first-person form of the pronoun in the utterance (“I” in this case) changes to its third-person form (to the pronoun “she” or to the proper name “Jennifer,” depending on the choice of the person reporting the utterance), and the adjective indicating possession in the original utterance (“my”) changes to the third-person form (“her”).

The change from present to past tense in reported speech is only for starters, of course. In the various other tenses, the operative verb of the utterance likewise generally moves one tense backwards in time when the reporting verb is in the past tense, as follows:

From present progressive (assuming that the speaker is male): “I am having a problem with one of my students.” To past progressive: “He said he was having a problem with one of his students.”

From simple present perfect: “I have been bypassed for promotion by my boss.” To simple past perfect: “He said he had been bypassed for promotion by his boss.”

From present perfect progressive: “I have been analyzing the problem but to no avail.” To past perfect progressive: “He said he had been analyzing the problem but to no avail.”

From simple past: “I saw the movie twice.” To past perfect: “He said he had seen the movie twice.” (If the act being reported happened very close or almost simultaneous to the utterance, however, the simple past may also be a logical tense for the operative verb of the reported utterance: “He said he saw the movie twice.”)

From past progressive: “I was taking medication then.” To past perfect progressive: “He said he had been taking medication at the time.”

However, when the operative verb of the reported utterance is in the past perfect or in the past perfect progressive, no change is possible for it in reported speech; it stays in that tense.

Utterance in the past perfect: “The bridge had collapsed by the time I reached the river.” Reported speech: “He said the bridge had collapsed by the time he reached the river.”

Utterance in the past perfect progressive: “I had been depending on that scholarship grant for four years.” Reported speech: “He said he had been depending on that scholarship grant for four years.”

We must also always remember that when the operative verb in the utterance is in the modal form, we need to change the modal auxiliary to its past tense form in reported speech. Thus, “will” changes to “would,” “can” to “could,” “must” to “had to,” and “may” to “might.”

As examples, “I will find her without any difficulty” becomes “He said he would find her without any difficulty” in reported speech; “I can beat her anytime in chess” becomes “He said he could beat her anytime in chess”; “All past due accounts must be settled at once” becomes “He said that all past due accounts had to be settled at once”; and “I may leave anytime” becomes “He said he might leave anytime.”

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, September 6, 2008 © 2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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Previously Featured Essay:

The perils of language misuse during live TV interviews

I think one of the most dreadful aspects of live electronic journalism is being asked to answer a badly phrased and impertinent question over the telephone for all the broadcast audience to hear. Such a question was posed by news-and-talk-show host to a national treasury official during a network TV broadcast several days ago. The subject was the headline story in most of the day’s newspapers that the treasury official had certified the availability of funds for a plebiscite on the proposed Charter change. The question asked him was this: “How true is it that you had certified the availability of funds for a referendum on Charter change?”

That question struck me not only as semantically wrong but also insolent, accusing, and offensive from a journalistic standpoint. It’s a question that a self-respecting individual shouldn’t really answer, or perhaps correct and put in better perspective first before dignifying it with an answer. This rarely happens in practice, however. The respondent often ends up muddling through with a silly answer (‘That’s a half truth!”, “Absolutely true!”, “Perfectly true!”) rather than risk being looked upon as uncooperative, evasive, or tricky by the broadcast audience.

We know that a statement is either true or false in the sense of being a “fact” or having “the property of being in accord with fact or reality,” and that the “truth” can’t be measured by an answer to such a qualitative question as “How true is it?” Only in the most informal sense, as in gossip or trivial conversations (which a TV interview on matters of national importance is not), can this frivolous manner of “measuring” the truth be used. From both the usage and journalistic standpoints, therefore, that TV host’s question about the budget official’s reported pronouncement was terribly inappropriate.

The semantically correct way of phrasing that question is, of course, this: “Is it true that you had certified the availability of funds for a referendum on charter change?” This is a question that can be answered truthfully with either a “Yes” or a “No,” and people can answer it without being made to feel that their honesty and integrity are under question.

But what seems to me an even more serious matter is the sense of haughtiness and contempt conveyed by TV broadcast people when they ask questions of this sort. In this particular instance, the TV anchor already knew that the budget official had indeed made that pronouncement. Before asking him the question, in fact, she had just finished a live interview of people who were condemning that pronouncement. So, it can reasonably be asked, how could she all so suddenly backtrack and ask the treasury official how true it was that he had made that statement in the first place?

I submit that a better prepared and more English-savvy TV journalist would have avoided asking that kind of question at all. A much better and non-confrontational opening to that telephone interview would have been a simple statement that could put the subject in perspective for both the respondent and the broadcast audience: “Mr. So-and-So, you were reported as having certified the availability of funds for a plebiscite on the proposed charter change. Can you please tell us precisely where the funds will be coming from? Will be fund releases for that purpose be legal?” This is the sort of thing that clarifies rather than muddles up matters.

I think that since their jobs are deeply imbued with the public interest, TV news-and-talk-show hosts should closely watch their language on camera and avoid being carried away so often by their personal biases and political leanings. The least they can do is to be objective, fair, and civil in treating their respondents. This way, they will be protecting not only their own credibility and integrity as TV journalists but also that of the broadcast media as a whole. (April 10, 2006)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 10, 2006 © 2006 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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