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If the direct speech is the past, whether it is expressed by the perfect or by the preterite, the perfect subjunctive is used (not the imperfect subjunctive). If the direct speech is in the future, the future subjunctive is used; both of the latter are formed by adding the auxiliaries that form the perfect or future into the subjunctive.
A future tense in indirect speech is turned into a future participle + esse. The infinitive esse is very often omitted: secūtūrōs sē dictātōrem respondērunt (Livy) [26] 'they replied that they would follow the dictator' A pronoun is usually used for the subject of an infinitive, even if it is omitted in direct speech.
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]
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).
In English, objects and complements nearly always come after the verb; a direct object precedes other complements such as prepositional phrases, but if there is an indirect object as well, expressed without a preposition, then that precedes the direct object: give me the book, but give the book to me.
In this theory both direct and indirect passives are derived from the same complementation structure with optional control. There is the assumption that the -(r)are morpheme in direct passives are the same as the ones used in indirect passives meaning that they both have an underlying structure containing the passive morpheme -(r)are. A problem ...
After a present tense main verb, the present subjunctive is usual, for example in the following indirect command: nūntium mittit ut veniant (Livy) [316] 'she sends a messenger (to say) that they should come' When a question is made indirect, the verb is always changed into the subjunctive mood, as in the following example:
Quotation marks are not used for indirect speech. This is because indirect speech can be a paraphrase; it is not a direct quote, and in the course of any composition, it is important to document when one is using a quotation versus when one is just giving content, which may be paraphrased, and which could be open to interpretation.