OTHER DEICTIC SHIFTS
As was illustrated in the beginning of this chapter, the use of indirect speech may require not only shifts in tense but also shifts in time and place adverbials and in personal and demonstrative pronouns.
Time/Place Adverbial Shifts
In the example given at the beginning of this chapter,
“School budgets will not be cut during this recession.” Smith a good paraphrase might contain either this or that , but the implications will be different: Smith predicted that no school budget cuts would occur during this recession. Smith predicted that no school budget cuts would occur during that recession.
In the first case, the reader or hearer will assume that the recession in question is still ongoing at the time that the paraphrase is written; in the second case, one might easily assume with the use of that that the recession is over at the time of writing. Likewise, options are available in two of the other examples above where tomorrow alternates with the next day and yesterday alternates with the day before, depending on the relation of the time of original utterance to the time of reported utterance. Such shifts in time are marked quite systematically and without overlap, as the following comparative tables show. Table 33.1 contains expression with speaker-time, i.e. moment of speaking, as the point of reference; the expression in Table 33.2 are used with some point in the past as the reference-point: The parallel between these adverbials and tense-backshifting is evident; however, there are no “exceptions” as there was with tense choice. One cannot use the adverb tomorrow to talk about the day after the that is talked about in a reported (dependent) clause unless the condition for using tomorrow still prevails in the main clause as well. Likewise, one use the next day in an utterance to refer to the day after the utterance, unless the condition for using this expression still obtains in the main clause. The same considerations apply to place- deictics. although the range of distinctionsis not as larges the adverb here becomes there (or vice versa), but this shift is again subject to consideration of whether the reported utterance was or was not uttered in the same location as the report. If the two places remain identical, then there is no shift; if there is no identity. there is a shift: Original quote: “I have been cleaning all day. Report (uttered in the same room): She said she had been cleaning all day. Report (uttered elsewhere): She said she had been cleaning all day.
Deictic Shifts in Pronouns
Just as time and place adverbials shift, pronominal forms also change as necessary. Most commonly, first-and second-person forms change to third-person forms: Original quote: “I hope that a solution to the problem will soon be found.” Reported utterance: Smith said that he hoped for a quick solution to the problem.
Under the proper circumstances, of course, quoted third-person forms can be shifted to first-and second-person forms, if the reference of the form is to the reporter or the read/hearer of the report:
Original quote by Mary: “I hope that Fred gets better soon.” Report by Fred:
Mary says that she hopes that /get better soon.
Report by someone speaking/writing to Fred: Mary says that she hopes that you get better soon.
In another set of circumstances, a first-person form might be properly paraphrased by a second-person form, and vice versa, when interlocutors are reporting on their own and each other’s speech:
Original quote: I am your best friend.
Report: You said you were my best friend.
Response to report:
Yes, I said was your best friend.
In general, it can be said that time/place adverbial shifts and pronoun shifts seldom leave the reporter with more than a single proper choice among forms. In this they contrast with backshifts in verb tense, which frequently permit real options. While pronoun shifts pose relatively few problems for ESL/EFL students, it is worthwhile for a teacher to spend some time focusing on adverbial shifts because, as with tense shift the required changes are not always reflected in exactly the same ways in other languages conventions for encoding time and place expressions.
SHIFTSING AND PARTIL QUOTATIONS
We have presented the complementizer that as a specific signal of indirect speech-that is, of a genuine paraphrase. It is not used to preface full quotations. Thus, as sequence like the following is not acceptable: *He said that, “The strong economy is likely to improve still further this year.” A full quotation requires the absence of that. However, it is often the case that what follows the complementizer is a mixture of quotation and paraphrase, and the quotation does not directly follow that, in which case that may become acceptable: He said that the economy, which has been strong, “is likely to improve still further this year.”
However, there are limits to such mixing that are imposed as a result of the need for the various shifts we have discussed. For example, Direct quotation: The mayor told me, “I am impressed at the leave of your commitment this year to the betterment of our city.” Full indirect reports: The mayor told me that he was impressed with the level of my commitment that year to the betterment of my home town. Partial indirect reports: *The mayor told me that he was impressed with “the level of your commitment this year to the betterment of our city.” *The mayor told me that “I am impressed at the level of your commitment” that year to the betterment of my home town.
The problem in the last two examples is related to the need for complete deictic shifts throughout the report. Without these shifts, the references of I, you/your, our, and this/that year become unclear enough to cause severe comprehension problems for readers. The choices: (a) full quotation, (b) full paraphrase, or (c) the use of shifted deictics in square brackets within quotations to replace the original, unshifted ones: The mayor told me that he was “impressed with the degree [my] commitment [that] year to the betterment of our city.”
REPORTING NOUNS AND OTHER METHODS OF ATTRIBUTION
So far, most of this chapter has covered the use of main-clause verbs to perform attributions in complement clause constructions. It should not, however be assumed that indirect speech need always be marked in this way. For example, many of the verbs used for reporting have related noun forms which can also serve as reporting devices. Thompson (1994:115ff.) provides a substantial list of reporting nouns. To give one example, the content of the clause below may be incorporated into a corresponding noun phrase: Smith believed that school budgets should not be cut. …Smith’s belief that school budgets should not be cut…
Other examples involve alternations between notify/notification, reveal/revelation, and complain/complaint. Predicated adjectives can also be used to alternate with verbs, provided other necessary changes occur: The politician insisted that taxes be cut. The politician was insisted on taxes being cut.
There are also a number of conventional ways that prepositional phrases are used in citation. The most common is probably the phrase according to X: others include in the opinion of X, in X’s view, and so on. Still other citation options that are used frequently in monologic narrative and conversation have been called free indirect discourse (Rimmon-kenan 1993) and zero-quotarves (Yule Mathis, and Hopkins 1992). In the first option, the identity of the reporting author seems to phase into the identity of person reported on, thereby producing what seems closer to direct than to indirect speech. Often, what is reported in this way are thoughts: Little Red Riding Hood objected to her mother’s advice. Why should she always take the same path to Gran [d]ma’s? She might see something different it she could cut through the woods. (Yule, Mathis, and HopKins 1992:247)
The second and third sentences cannot be direct quotations given the use of the third person pronoun she. Sometimes the standard textbook rule that says that no subject-operator inversion may occur in embedded clauses seems violated, as in a further example from the authors cited above:
Mr. H. asked didn’t the town get 2% of sales from the company and wasn’t it a 15-year contract with a 10-year pension. (1992:247)
Given appropriate discourse contexts and adequate contrast and texture in voice quality (i.e., Yule (1995)), even entire dialogues can be represented without conventional makes use of the expression be like (a predicate now current among younger speakers with the meaning of “say something approximately like”) in the context of a speaker’s conversation with her mother:
She’s like, “So what time did you get in?” “We got in at two-thirty.” “Well got home a little after one”… (1992:249)
Two other expressions, both current among younger speakers are the verb go and the predicate be all, as illustrated in the following constructed example: I said, “What are we gonna do, then?” And she goes, “What are you asking me for?” And I go, “You’re the one who made the suggestion,” and she’s all, “Yeah, but you’re the one with the money”…
Yule, Mathis, and HopKins note that every reporting in conversation is full of such devices unlikely to be found in textbooks and that ESL/EFL students ought to be made aware of them not so much in order to produce them as to avoid misunderstanding them when they encounter such reporting strategies in everyday conversation.
THE MEANING OF REPORTING DEVIC
OTHER DEICTIC SHIFTS
As was illustrated in the beginning of this chapter, the use of indirect speech may require not only shifts in tense but also shifts in time and place adverbials and in personal and demonstrative pronouns.
Time/Place Adverbial Shifts
In the example given at the beginning of this chapter,
“School budgets will not be cut during this recession.” Smith a good paraphrase might contain either this or that , but the implications will be different: Smith predicted that no school budget cuts would occur during this recession. Smith predicted that no school budget cuts would occur during that recession.
In the first case, the reader or hearer will assume that the recession in question is still ongoing at the time that the paraphrase is written; in the second case, one might easily assume with the use of that that the recession is over at the time of writing. Likewise, options are available in two of the other examples above where tomorrow alternates with the next day and yesterday alternates with the day before, depending on the relation of the time of original utterance to the time of reported utterance. Such shifts in time are marked quite systematically and without overlap, as the following comparative tables show. Table 33.1 contains expression with speaker-time, i.e. moment of speaking, as the point of reference; the expression in Table 33.2 are used with some point in the past as the reference-point: The parallel between these adverbials and tense-backshifting is evident; however, there are no “exceptions” as there was with tense choice. One cannot use the adverb tomorrow to talk about the day after the that is talked about in a reported (dependent) clause unless the condition for using tomorrow still prevails in the main clause as well. Likewise, one use the next day in an utterance to refer to the day after the utterance, unless the condition for using this expression still obtains in the main clause. The same considerations apply to place- deictics. although the range of distinctionsis not as larges the adverb here becomes there (or vice versa), but this shift is again subject to consideration of whether the reported utterance was or was not uttered in the same location as the report. If the two places remain identical, then there is no shift; if there is no identity. there is a shift: Original quote: “I have been cleaning all day. Report (uttered in the same room): She said she had been cleaning all day. Report (uttered elsewhere): She said she had been cleaning all day.
Deictic Shifts in Pronouns
Just as time and place adverbials shift, pronominal forms also change as necessary. Most commonly, first-and second-person forms change to third-person forms: Original quote: “I hope that a solution to the problem will soon be found.” Reported utterance: Smith said that he hoped for a quick solution to the problem.
Under the proper circumstances, of course, quoted third-person forms can be shifted to first-and second-person forms, if the reference of the form is to the reporter or the read/hearer of the report:
Original quote by Mary: “I hope that Fred gets better soon.” Report by Fred:
Mary says that she hopes that /get better soon.
Report by someone speaking/writing to Fred: Mary says that she hopes that you get better soon.
In another set of circumstances, a first-person form might be properly paraphrased by a second-person form, and vice versa, when interlocutors are reporting on their own and each other’s speech:
Original quote: I am your best friend.
Report: You said you were my best friend.
Response to report:
Yes, I said was your best friend.
In general, it can be said that time/place adverbial shifts and pronoun shifts seldom leave the reporter with more than a single proper choice among forms. In this they contrast with backshifts in verb tense, which frequently permit real options. While pronoun shifts pose relatively few problems for ESL/EFL students, it is worthwhile for a teacher to spend some time focusing on adverbial shifts because, as with tense shift the required changes are not always reflected in exactly the same ways in other languages conventions for encoding time and place expressions.
SHIFTSING AND PARTIL QUOTATIONS
We have presented the complementizer that as a specific signal of indirect speech-that is, of a genuine paraphrase. It is not used to preface full quotations. Thus, as sequence like the following is not acceptable: *He said that, “The strong economy is likely to improve still further this year.” A full quotation requires the absence of that. However, it is often the case that what follows the complementizer is a mixture of quotation and paraphrase, and the quotation does not directly follow that, in which case that may become acceptable: He said that the economy, which has been strong, “is likely to improve still further this year.”
However, there are limits to such mixing that are imposed as a result of the need for the various shifts we have discussed. For example, Direct quotation: The mayor told me, “I am impressed at the leave of your commitment this year to the betterment of our city.” Full indirect reports: The mayor told me that he was impressed with the level of my commitment that year to the betterment of my home town. Partial indirect reports: *The mayor told me that he was impressed with “the level of your commitment this year to the betterment of our city.” *The mayor told me that “I am impressed at the level of your commitment” that year to the betterment of my home town.
The problem in the last two examples is related to the need for complete deictic shifts throughout the report. Without these shifts, the references of I, you/your, our, and this/that year become unclear enough to cause severe comprehension problems for readers. The choices: (a) full quotation, (b) full paraphrase, or (c) the use of shifted deictics in square brackets within quotations to replace the original, unshifted ones: The mayor told me that he was “impressed with the degree [my] commitment [that] year to the betterment of our city.”
REPORTING NOUNS AND OTHER METHODS OF ATTRIBUTION
So far, most of this chapter has covered the use of main-clause verbs to perform attributions in complement clause constructions. It should not, however be assumed that indirect speech need always be marked in this way. For example, many of the verbs used for reporting have related noun forms which can also serve as reporting devices. Thompson (1994:115ff.) provides a substantial list of reporting nouns. To give one example, the content of the clause below may be incorporated into a corresponding noun phrase: Smith believed that school budgets should not be cut. …Smith’s belief that school budgets should not be cut…
Other examples involve alternations between notify/notification, reveal/revelation, and complain/complaint. Predicated adjectives can also be used to alternate with verbs, provided other necessary changes occur: The politician insisted that taxes be cut. The politician was insisted on taxes being cut.
There are also a number of conventional ways that prepositional phrases are used in citation. The most common is probably the phrase according to X: others include in the opinion of X, in X’s view, and so on. Still other citation options that are used frequently in monologic narrative and conversation have been called free indirect discourse (Rimmon-kenan 1993) and zero-quotarves (Yule Mathis, and Hopkins 1992). In the first option, the identity of the reporting author seems to phase into the identity of person reported on, thereby producing what seems closer to direct than to indirect speech. Often, what is reported in this way are thoughts: Little Red Riding Hood objected to her mother’s advice. Why should she always take the same path to Gran [d]ma’s? She might see something different it she could cut through the woods. (Yule, Mathis, and HopKins 1992:247)
The second and third sentences cannot be direct quotations given the use of the third person pronoun she. Sometimes the standard textbook rule that says that no subject-operator inversion may occur in embedded clauses seems violated, as in a further example from the authors cited above:
Mr. H. asked didn’t the town get 2% of sales from the company and wasn’t it a 15-year contract with a 10-year pension. (1992:247)
Given appropriate discourse contexts and adequate contrast and texture in voice quality (i.e., Yule (1995)), even entire dialogues can be represented without conventional makes use of the expression be like (a predicate now current among younger speakers with the meaning of “say something approximately like”) in the context of a speaker’s conversation with her mother:
She’s like, “So what time did you get in?” “We got in at two-thirty.” “Well got home a little after one”… (1992:249)
Two other expressions, both current among younger speakers are the verb go and the predicate be all, as illustrated in the following constructed example: I said, “What are we gonna do, then?” And she goes, “What are you asking me for?” And I go, “You’re the one who made the suggestion,” and she’s all, “Yeah, but you’re the one with the money”…
Yule, Mathis, and HopKins note that every reporting in conversation is full of such devices unlikely to be found in textbooks and that ESL/EFL students ought to be made aware of them not so much in order to produce them as to avoid misunderstanding them when they encounter such reporting strategies in everyday conversation.
THE MEANING OF REPORTING DEVIC
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