A Masteral student in Myanmar doing comparative research on the four types of sentences in English—namely simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex—asked for help in early December on how to distinguish direct speech from indirect or reported speech, and how to explain what constitutes a dependent clause in reported speech.
Paraphrasing what AungMyo said: “Our teacher said that the direct-speech statement ‘I was hungry’ becomes the dependent clause in reported speech, but in my research I need to explain precisely why and how ‘I was hungry’ becomes that dependent clause.”
Let me begin by saying that direct statements like “I was hungry” are simple and straightforward, but it gets more complicated when we report that someone else has uttered that statement. Perhaps we can’t remember the exact words said or just want to summarize them, just focus on the salient points, or perhaps improve the grammar of what was said. When we do these things, we enter the realm of what’s called
reported speech or
indirect speech.
The pivotal factor in reported speech is the tense of the reporting verb. When the reporting verb is in the simple present tense, present perfect tense, or future tense, the operative verb in the reported statement remains unchanged; often, only the subject noun or pronoun in the quoted statement need to be changed.
Consider that the directly quoted statement “I am hungry” was said by your close friend Dewi Thant Z.
In the
simple present tense, that statement can be rendered in reported speech as follows:
“My close friend Dewi Thant
says she is hungry.” (You say this to someone beside you just right after Dewi said “I am hungry.”)
In the
present perfect tense:
“My close friend Dewi Thant
has said (that) she is hungry.” (You say this to someone beside you perhaps several minutes after Dewi said it.”
And in the
future tense:
“My close friend Dewi Thant
will say (that) she is hungry.” (In anticipation, you can tell this to someone through your mobile phone several minutes before actually Dewi says it.)
In all three of the reporting tenses above, the only grammatically significant change in the reported statement is the replacement of the personal pronoun “I” with “My close friend Dewi Thant.” Of course,
the conjunction “that” is used to introduce the reported statement, making it take the form of a dependent clause in reported speech.
In informal writing, however, the conjunction “that” can often be dropped to make the reported speech easier to articulate, as we can see in the following “that”-less constructions of the simple present tense, present perfect tense, and future tense renditions: “My close friend Dewi Thant
says she is hungry.” “My close friend Dewi Thant
has said she is hungry.” “My close friend Dewi Thant
will say she is hungry.”
But things in reported speech become more iffy when the reporting verb is in the past tense. Take this direct quote from a Philippine official about a Somalia ship-piracy issue some years back: “At the moment, we
have not gotten any feedback as to the advisability of issuing an official ban for Filipino seamen going there (Somalia).”
Quite simply, that direct quote can be rendered in reported speech this way:
“The Philippine official
said (that) they had not gotten any feedback at the moment as to the advisability of issuing an official ban for Filipino seamen going to Somalia.
When the reporting verb is in the simple past tense, the operative verb in the quoted statement—the dependent clause—generally moves one tense backwards in reported speech. However, that rule applies only when the action in the reported statement is a consummated and not a repeated or habitual one.
We’ll continue this discussion next week.
(Next:
What constitutes a dependent clause in reported speech - 2) December 24, 2020
This essay, 2,024th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the December 17, 2020 Internet edition of The Manila Times
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