Author Topic: How to use the normal sequence-of-tenses rule for reported speech  (Read 9322 times)

Joe Carillo

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Question from Mark L. (August 14, 2010):

Good evening, sir. I hope you are not too busy. 

Just one question lang po. And it would mean a lot kung masasagot nyo. Ito po kasi yung concept na hirap na hirap akong masagot.
 
You see, sir, nalilito ako kung anong gagamiting tamang verb for sentences that use “said.”
 
Here po is an example:
 
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”?
 
Thank you po, sir, and God bless.


My reply to Mark L:

Yes, Mark, 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 normal sequence-of-tenses rule in English grammar.

Now let’s review how this rule applies when that division manager’s utterance is stated 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.”

Now, having explained the workings of reported speech and how the normal sequence-of-tenses rule applies to the grammar of the statement of the Sandra Bullock character in that movie, let me just comment on a slight grammatical wrinkle in that statement.

Here’s the statement again as actually uttered by 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, where the reporting verb “said” is in the past tense. In this reported-speech sentence, 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 standpoint of the Sandra Bullock character, Mike made that statement in the past and she is, in effect, reporting that statement, and the normal sequence-of-tenses rule should apply to Mike’s action—meaning that it should be rendered one tense backward (from “you are going” to “you were going”) in the reported speech.

I would think, though, that the use of “were” in the third sentence of the statement of the Sandra Bullock character, “Tell me, Mike, why were you going to the gym?”, is a little bit problematic. For one thing, unlike the first sentence, it doesn’t have a reporting verb. In fact, it’s not really reported speech but a declarative statement, so it doesn’t sound semantically correct for Mike’s action to take one tense backward in that sentence, and all the more so because the reporting of the statement is done only a few seconds after Mike uttered it (so the intent of “going to the gym” is obviously still in his mind). Strictly speaking, therefore, the operative 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 line of dialogue 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?"

If this is the case, why then did the dialogue also use “were” in that third sentence?

All I can say is that in real life, people can’t really be expected to be so scrupulously grammatical when they talk, unlike the grammarian in me while doing this grammar analysis of that line of dialogue. To put it even more simply, we really shouldn’t expect the Sandra Bullock character to be conscious of the need to shift from reported speech in the first sentence to simple declarative in the third when referring to the same statement of Mike. The normal thought process of people in day-to-day situations is really much more linear and uncomplicated than that, and I have the feeling that the scriptwriter of that movie (and probably Sandra Bullock herself while delivering her lines during the filming of that movie) thought it best to use “were” in both sentences simply for naturalness and for consistency’s sake. However, when our English is being formally tested and our future might well depend on how we score in that exam, we have to be much more exacting with our grammar than that movie dialogue.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2010, 02:29:36 PM by Joe Carillo »