Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
The personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class (a remnant of the more extensive Germanic case system of Old English). For other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order , by prepositions , and by the " Saxon genitive or English possessive ...
Indirect speech acts are commonly used to reject proposals and to make requests. For example, if a speaker asks, "Would you like to meet me for coffee?" and the other replies, "I have class", the second speaker has used an indirect speech act to reject the proposal.
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
Verbs often undergo tense changes in indirect speech. This commonly occurs in content clauses (typically that-clauses and indirect questions), when governed by a predicate of saying (thinking, knowing, etc.) which is in the past tense or conditional mood. In this situation the following tense and aspect changes occur relative to the original words:
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 ...
Discover the latest breaking news in the U.S. and around the world — politics, weather, entertainment, lifestyle, finance, sports and much more.