Part I:

The following very interesting question about reported speech—admittedly a grammar Waterloo for not a few English-language writers and speakers—was e-mailed to me by Mark L. last weekend:

“Just one question on a grammatical concept that I find so difficult to answer:

“In the movie The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock sees this guy walking. She stops her car and asks, ‘Where are you going?’

“The boy replies, ‘To the gym.’

“And the boy continues walking.

“Sandra gets out of the car, catches up with the boy, and says, ‘You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?’

“Was she right using ‘were’ instead of ‘are’?”

Here’s my reply to Mark:

Yes, the Sandra Bullock character in that movie was right in using “were” instead of “are” when she said, “You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?”

To understand why the past tense “were” has to be used instead of the present tense “are” in that line of dialogue, we need a reacquaintance with the grammar of reported speech. What’s at work here is the so-called normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar. 

Reported speech or indirect speech is, of course, simply the kind of sentence someone makes when he or she reports what someone else has said. For instance, a company’s division manager might have told a news reporter these exact words: “I am resigning to join another company.” In journalism, where the reporting verb is normally in the past tense, that statement takes this form in reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join another company.” 

Depending on the speaker’s predisposition or intent, the operative verb in utterances can take any tense. However, when an utterance is in the form of reported speech and the reporting verb is in the past tense, the operative verb of that utterance generally takes one step back from the present into the past: the present becomes past, the past usually stays in the past, the present perfect becomes past perfect, and the future becomes future conditional. This is the so-called normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar. 

Now let’s review how this rule applies when that division manager’s utterance is reported in the various tenses: 

Present tense to past tense. Utterance: “I am resigning to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he was resigning to join another company.” 

Past tense to past tense. Utterance: “I resigned to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he resigned to join another company.” (The past tense can usually be retained in reported speech when the intended act is carried out close to its announcement; if much earlier, the past perfect applies.) 

Present perfect to past perfect tense. Utterance: “I have resigned to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he had resigned to join another company.”        

Future tense to future conditional tense. Utterance: “I will resign to join another company.” Reported speech: “The division manager said he would resign to join another company.” 

We can see that the reported speech for the utterance of the Sandra Bullock character falls under the first category above—from present tense to past tense. So it’s correct to use the past tense “were” instead of “are” in that reported speech: “Sandra gets out of the car, catches up with the boy, and says, ‘You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?’” 

Now, having explained the workings of reported speech and how the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies in that utterance of the Sandra Bullock character, I’ll be discussing in the next essay a slight grammatical wrinkle in that line of dialogue. (August 21, 2010)

Part II:

In the preceding essay, I explained the workings of reported speech and how the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies in this reported speech of the Sandra Bullock character in the movie The Blind Side: “Sandra gets out of the car, catches up with the boy, and says, ‘You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?’”

In answer to the question of reader Mark L. on whether the Sandra Bullock character was right in using “were” instead of “are” in her directly quoted utterance, I said yes, she was right. I explained that under the normal sequence-of-tenses rule, when the reporting verb for an utterance is in the past tense, the operative verb of that utterance generally takes one tense backward from the present to the past—in this case from “are going” to “were going.”

I qualified my answer, though, by saying that there’s actually a slight grammatical wrinkle in the tense usage of that line of dialogue, and this is what I’ll be discussing now in this week’s column.

Here, again, is that directly quoted utterance of the Sandra Bullock character:

“You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?”

The first sentence, “You said you were going to the gym,” is definitely reported speech, with the reporting verb “said” in the past tense. So it’s definitely correct for the operative verb “are” in Mike’s original utterance to take one tense backward to the past tense “were.” From the Sandra Bullock character’s standpoint, Mike made that statement in the past and she is, in effect, reporting his statement. The normal sequence-of-tenses rule should then apply to Mike’s action—it should be rendered one tense backward (from “you are going” to “you were going”) in the reported speech.

But the use of “were” is a little bit problematic in the third sentence of the Sandra Bullock character’s utterance, “Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?” This is because unlike the first sentence, this third sentence doesn’t have a reporting verb. In fact, it’s not really reported speech but an interrogative statement, so it’s not grammatically valid for Mike’s action to take one tense backward in that sentence; another thing, Mike’s statement is reported just a few seconds after it was uttered (the intent of “going to the gym” is therefore still very much in Mike’s mind). Strictly speaking, then, the verb “are going” shouldn’t take one tense backward but stay as is, “Tell me, Mike, why are you going to the gym?”  

The scrupulously correct rendering of that utterance should therefore be as follows: “You said you were going to the gym. Well, the gym is closed. Tell me, Mike, why are you going to the gym?"

Why then did the dialogue use “were” in that third sentence?

Well, in real life, people can’t be expected to be so scrupulously grammatical when they talk, unlike the grammarian in me doing this grammar analysis. Indeed, we really shouldn’t expect people to be so finicky with their English grammar as to shift from reported speech in the first sentence to simple declarative in the third when referring to precisely the same statement. The normal thought process of people in day-to-day situations is actually much more linear and uncomplicated than that, so it’s likely that the scriptwriter of that movie (and probably Sandra Bullock herself while delivering her lines) thought it best to use “were” in both sentences for naturalness and consistency’s sake.

We should keep in mind, though, that when our English is being formally tested and our future might well depend on our score in an exam, we need to be much more exacting with our grammar than that movie dialogue. (August 28, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, August 21 and 28, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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Take a look at these two sentences:

(1) “This section covers a breadth of important information that will help you tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam.”

(2) “This section covers a breadth of important information that will help you to tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam.”

Which of them is constructed properly—Sentence 1, which uses the bare infinitive “tackle” in the subordinate clause “that will help you tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam,” or Sentence 2, which uses the full infinitive “to tackle” instead in that same subordinate clause?

A member of Jose Carillo’s English Forum who calls herself Jeanne was curious if there’s a general rule for using the bare infinitive or full infinitive, so I made the following analysis of the two sentences as a basis for making that choice:

To simplify the analysis, let’s begin with Sentence 2. In that sentence, the italicized phrase “to tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam” is what’s called an infinitive phrase. We will recall that an infinitive phrase is simply an infinitive—a verb in the present tense that’s normally preceded by “to”—together with its modifiers, objects, or complements. In Sentence 2, that infinitive is “to tackle” and its modifier is the phrase “any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam.”

In Sentence 1, on the other hand, the italicized phrase “tackle any analytical problem that is thrown at you on the exam” is what’s called a bare infinitive phrase. A bare infinitive phrase is one where the infinitive—“tackle” in this case—has dropped the “to.” The bare infinitive “tackle” in Sentence 1 works in conjunction with the helping verb “help,” and you can see that it has dropped the “to” from “to tackle” without messing up the grammar and semantics of the sentence. In fact, you must have noticed that Sentence 1 with the bare infinitive even reads and sounds better than Sentence 2 with the full infinitive.

But the big question is this: Is there a general rule for using bare infinitives or full infinitives?

To work properly or at least sound right, some sentence constructions using the infinitive phrase need to drop “to” or have the option drop it. This happens in two specific instances:

(1) When the infinitive phrase works in conjunction with such perception verbs as “see,” “feel,” “hear,” and “watch”; and

(2) When the infinitive phrase works in conjunction with such helping verbs as “help,” “let,” and “make.”

Sentence 1 with the bare infinitive “tackle” belongs to the second category, and it just so happens this sentence reads and sounds better than Sentence 2 with the full infinitive “to tackle.” Even with the full infinitive, though, take note that Sentence 2 also works properly and sounds perfectly.

But certain sentence constructions absolutely need to use the bare infinitive to work properly, like this one: “We saw the building collapse like a deck of cards.” When the full infinitive is used, the sentence sounds very awkward: “We saw the building to collapse like a deck of cards.” This construction should be avoided.

The bare-infinitive construction is also called for in the following sentence where the infinitive “to rise” works in conjunction with the perception verb “watch”: “They watched the young man rise spectacularly in the organization without making any effort at all.” Now see how awful and stilted that sentence becomes when it uses the full infinitive “to rise”: “They watched the young man to rise spectacularly in the organization without making any effort at all.”

Indeed, there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules for making the choice between using a full infinitive and a bare infinitive in a sentence. We ultimately just have to play it by ear. (October 2, 2010)

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From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 2, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

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