Using indirect speech to report words and ideas
|
Indirect speech changes | page 3 of 6 |
When to make tense changes in indirect speech
When we report someone's words or thoughts in indirect speech, we choose to use tenses that are appropriate to the reporting situation. Consider the following text which first appeared in a British newspaper:
Dr Lindh pointed out that there was evidence that "earthquakes do not just go bang". He explained that so much material is involved in an earthquake and the temperatures and pressures are so intense, that there has to be some give before the quake itself. (Microconcord Corpus A)
Note that the verbs in bold are in the present simple tense because the information reported is still believed to be true or is still relevant to the reporting situation. Other similar examples are:
A doctor who examined him said that he is potentially suicidal.
(Microconcord Corpus A)He said that advertising gives us free television and that's kind of true.
(Bank of English)Davidson added that Somerset has about four cases to hear next week. (Microconcord Corpus A)
It is possible to use a past tense for the verbs highlighted in bold above, but there is a subtle difference in meaning. Compare the following two sentences:
Peter said he lives in Kowloon.
Peter said he lived in Kowloon.
The first sentence implies that the reporter accepts Peter's statement of where he
lives, whereas the second one implies that the reporter is just reporting what Peter said,
which may or may not be the truth.
Teaching implications
Instead of asking students to learn rules that are often broken in authentic English, it is much more important for students to see that the choice of tenses (and adverbs, pronouns, etc) depends on meaning in context.
Introduction
When to make tense changes in indirect speech
