INDIRECT SPEECH

 




Indirect speech, also called indirect discourse, is a means of expressing the content of statements, questions or other utterances, without quoting them explicitly as is done in direct speech. For example, He said "I'm coming" is direct speech, whereas He said he was coming is indirect speech. Indirect speech should not be confused with indirect speech acts.

In terms of grammar, indirect speech often makes use of certain syntactic structures such as content clauses ("that" clauses, such as (that) he was coming), and sometimes infinitive phrases. References to questions in indirect speech frequently take the form of interrogative content clauses, also called indirect questions (such as whether he was coming).In indirect speech certain grammatical categories are changed relative to the words of the original sentence.

For example, person may change as a result of a change of speaker or listener (as I changes to he in the example above). In some languages, including English, the tense of verbs is often changed – this is often called sequence of tenses.

When written, indirect speech is not normally enclosed in quotation marks or any similar typographical devices for indicating that a direct quotation is being made. However such devices are sometimes used to indicate that the indirect speech is a faithful quotation of someone's words (with additional devices such as square brackets and ellipses to indicate deviations or omissions from those words), as in He informed us that "after dinner [he] would like to make an announcement".

Examples:

·         It is raining hard.

ü  She says that it is raining hard. (no change)

ü  She said that it was raining hard. (change of tense when the main verb is past tense)

·         I have painted the ceiling blue.

ü  He said that he had painted the ceiling blue. (change of person and tense)

·         I will come to your party tomorrow.

ü  I said that I would come to his party the next day/the following day. (change of tense, person and time expression)

·         How do people manage to live in this city?

ü  I asked him how people managed to live in that city. (change of tense and question syntax, and of demonstrative)

·         Please leave the room.

ü  I asked them to leave the room. (use of infinitive phrase)

The tense changes illustrated above (also called backshifting), which occur because the main verb ("said", "asked") is in the past tense, are not obligatory when the situation described is still valid:

Time Expressions

today                             that day
now                                then
yesterday                       the day before
… days ago                    … days before
last week                       the week before
next year                       the following year
tomorrow                       the next day / the following day

Place
here                                there

Demonstratives

this                                 that
these                             those

sourse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indirect_speech

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Iran backed out of nuclear deal - John Kerry

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said Iran backed out of a deal on its nuclear programme during talks with world powers in Geneva on Saturday.

Amid reports that France's reservations scuppered an agreement, Mr Kerry told reporters in Abu Dhabi: "The French signed off on it; we signed off on it."

Iran had been unable to accept the deal "at that particular moment", he added.

Mr Kerry said he hoped in the next few months they could "find an agreement that meets everyone's standards".

Representatives from Iran and the so-called P5+1 - the US, UK, France, Russia and China plus Germany - will meet again on 20 November...

source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24895911