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Some modal verbs (would, could, might, should, ought to) do not change in indirect speech. [3] The indirect speech sentence is then ambiguous since it can be a result of two different direct speech sentences. For example: I can get it for free. OR I could get it for free. He said that he could get it for free. (ambiguity) However, in many ...
Indirect speech, also known as reported speech, indirect discourse (US), or ōrātiō oblīqua (/ ə ˈ r eɪ ʃ ɪ oʊ ə ˈ b l aɪ k w ə / or / oʊ ˈ r ɑː t ɪ oʊ ɒ ˈ b l iː k w ə /), [1] is the practice, common in all Latin historical writers, of reporting spoken or written words indirectly, using different grammatical forms.
A typical context in which rules of sequence of tenses apply is that of indirect speech. If, at some past time, someone spoke a sentence in a particular tense (say the present tense), and that act of speaking is now being reported, the tense used in the clause that corresponds to the words spoken may or may not be the same as the tense that was ...
A complement of a verbum dicendi can be direct or indirect speech. Direct speech is a single unit of linguistic object that is '"mentioned" rather than used.' [1] In contrast, indirect speech is a proposition whose parts make semantic and syntactic contribution to the whole sentence just like parts of the matrix clause (i.e. the main clause/sentence, as opposed to an embedded clause).
Free indirect discourse can be described as a "technique of presenting a character's voice partly mediated by the voice of the author". In the words of the French narrative theorist Gérard Genette, "the narrator takes on the speech of the character, or, if one prefers, the character speaks through the voice of the narrator, and the two instances then are merged". [1]
Notice how, in English (and in some other languages), different syntax is used in direct and indirect questions: direct questions normally use subject-verb inversion, while indirect questions do not. Reported questions (as in the last of the examples) are also subject to the tense and other changes that apply generally in indirect speech.
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Some examples with the plain past perfect: I had lived in that house for 10 years. The children had been in their room since lunchtime. For other specific uses of the past perfect, see § Conditional sentences, § Dependent clauses, § Expressions of wish, and § Indirect speech.