A few years ago, a Forum member asked these tough grammar questions: “Are there specific prescriptions when to use present-tense reporting verbs over past-tense reporting verbs? Also, can’t we just use past-tense reporting verbs at all times so that whatever is being reported can just be construed as an event in the past?”
I replied that I wasn’t aware of any prescription when to use present-tense reporting verbs over past-tense reporting verbs. My thinking had always been that it entirely depends on the expository or narrative style used, the medium or mode of communication, and personal choice.
FOLLOWING THE NORMAL SEQUENCE-OF-TENSES RULE, THE VERB
MOVES ONE TENSE BACKWARD IN REPORTED SPEECH
Recall that we use what’s called
reported speech or
indirect speech when we report what someone else has said or written without using the exact words uttered. We probably can’t remember the exact words or we just want to provide the gist of the verbatim statement.
Assume that you are watching a televised press conference and a newspaper reporter asks: “Mr. President, how will you deal with Cabinet members who have gone overboard in criticizing how some local officials are distributing Covid-19 relief goods? Will you reprimand them and order them to to be more civil and circumspect?”
Most likely you’ll be using the simple present tense for the reporting verb when you informally recount to an acquaintance what you heard: “This newspaper reporter asks the President how how he will deal with Cabinet members who have badmouthed some barangay officials for the manner that they are distributing Covid-19 relief goods. He asks if the President will reprimand the Cabinet members concerned.”
Note that this present-tense telling is in many ways similar to the stream-of-consciousness technique, which is the continuous unedited chronological flow of conscious experience through the mind that we often come across in literary fiction. Though not using the exact words of the speaker, it would reflect the sense of what was said but adds an obligatory ID of the speaker (“this newspaper reporter”) and of the person addressed (“the President”).
When the past-tense is used for the reporting verb, however, the so-called
normal sequence-of-tenses rule requires the operative verb in the reported statement itself
to move one tense backward. That direct quote from the TV interview would then take this form: “The newspaper reporter asked the President how he
would deal with Cabinet members who
had badmouthed certain barangay officials for the manner that they were distributing Covid-19 relief goods. He asked the President if he
would reprimand those Cabinet members.”
Note in particular that the present-tense verb “will” consistently becomes the past-tense “would,” clearly marking the tense shift in such reported statements.
In real life, though, not all uttered statements to be reported will be in the present tense. The tense of utterances could very well run the whole gamut of the tenses, from past to present to future. When the reporting verb used for an uttered statement is specifically in the past tense, it is the operative verb of the uttered statement itself that moves backward in tense. Under the normal sequence-of-tenses rule, the tense of the utterance itself moves one step back as follows:
the present becomes past, the past usually remains in the past, the present perfect becomes past perfect, and the future becomes future conditional.
Finally, here’s my answer to the the Forum member’s other tough question: It is too restrictive and misleading to use only past-tense reporting verbs for reported speech or indirect speech. This is because not all events can be construed as events in the past for simplicity’s sake. So, no matter what reporting tense is used, the actual time when the action being reported took place must always be made clear to avoid confusing the listener or reader.
(Next week:
“Have you had a look?” or “Did you have a look?”) April 16, 2020
This essay, 1,189th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the April 9, 2020 Internet edition of The Manila Times
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