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Indirect speech. In linguistics, speech or indirect discourse is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence Jill said she was coming is indirect discourse while Jill said "I'm coming" would be direct discourse. In fiction, the "utterance" might amount to ...
t. e. Indirect speech, also known as reported speech, indirect discourse (US), or ōrātiō oblīqua (/ əˈreɪʃɪoʊ əˈblaɪkwə / or / oʊˈrɑːtɪoʊ ɒˈbliːkwə /), [1] is the practice, common in all Latin historical writers, of reporting spoken or written words indirectly, using different grammatical forms. Passages of indirect ...
Free indirect speech is the literary technique of writing a character's first-person thoughts in the voice of the third-person narrator. It is a style using aspects of third-person narration conjoined with the essence of first-person direct speech. The technique is also referred to as free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or, in French ...
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 form and semantics, it is a straightforward yes–no question, which can be answered either "Yes, I can" or "No, I cannot". There is, however, an indirect speech act (which Clark calls an elective construal) that can optionally be inferred from the question, namely "please pass the mustard". Such indirect speech acts flout Grice's maxim of ...
Speech act. For the U.S. law, see SPEECH Act. In the philosophy of language and linguistics, a speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. [1] For example, the phrase "I would like the mashed potatoes, could you please pass them to me?"
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.
In Latin, the sequence of tenses rule affects dependent verbs in the subjunctive mood, mainly in indirect questions, indirect commands, and purpose clauses. [4] If the main verb is in one of the non-past tenses, the subordinate verb is usually in the present or perfect subjunctive (primary sequence); if the main verb is in one of the past tenses, the subordinate verb is usually in the ...