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Chapter XLII
INDIRECT AND REPRESENTED SPEECH
INDIRECT SPEECH
In characterising indirect speech as compared with direct, we must dwell on two special cases in which a distinction found in direct speech gets lost in a change into indirect speech.
The first of these is the distinction between the past indefinite and the present perfect tense (and also the past perfect). Both of these, when changed into forms appropriate to indirect speech, are replaced by the past perfect. In a similar way, both the past continuous and the present perfect continuous (and, for that matter, the past perfect continuous) of direct speech will be replaced by the past perfect continuous in indirect speech. This is too well known to need illustration.
In terms of modern linguistic science, we may say that the distinction between the past indefinite and the present perfect (and the past perfect) is neutralised in indirect speech. This, in its turn, sheds some new light on the categories of tense and correlation which we discussed above (Chapters IX and X). The question is this: if the past tense (as distinct from the present) has a tense characteristic, and the present perfect (again, as distinct from the present) has a correlation characteristic, what should we think of the past perfect, which corresponds to the one as well as to the other? We have not the slightest reason to give preference to. tense and to declare that tense is the more essential category, or to correlation, and say that correlation is more essential: each of these statements would be quite arbitrary. If we are to stick to an objective and unprejudiced view of facts, the only reasonable and justified conclusion would appear to be this: in the past perfect the two categories of tense and correlation are merged into one, that is, the difference between them is neutralised. This would also seem to show that the past perfect is not entirely parallel to the present perfect, since in the present perfect no such merger is either real or imaginable.
We may also observe that in the opposite operation, that is, in changing indirect speech into direct, we do not know whether the past perfect of indirect speech should be changed into a past indefinite or into a present perfect (or, indeed, left as it is, namely, as a past perfect), unless we take into account the context of the speech (or perhaps even the situation in which it is being pronounced). We have, in making this change into direct speech, to differentiate between two verbal categories which are not distinguished in the indirect speech text. This may be illustrated by the following extract from a modern novel: She remembered that she had come to his house that night only because at a certain time at Madame Guillaume's party, when the Princesse de Cortignac and Monsieur de
332 Indirect and Represented Speech
G azière were coming toward the alcove where they sat, he had gripped her wrist. (R. WEST) In changing this passage into direct speech, should we change the past perfect forms had come and had gripped into a past tense or into a present perfect, or should we, perhaps, leave them as they are? To decide on this, we must look at the context, and in this particular case it is the words that night and at a certain time that are decisive: the tense to be used in direct speech is the past indefinite.
Another case of two different verbal forms of direct speech being replaced by one and the same form in indirect speech is seen in sentences with their "predicate verb in the future tense and those with their predicate verb in the form "should + infinitive" to express a conditional action. Let us first consider a self-made example: He said, "1 shall come if I have time" and He said, "1 should come if I had time." In converting each of these sentences into indirect speech, we arrive at the same result in both cases, namely, He said that he would come if he had time. Thus the distinction between futurity and conditionally, which is clearly expressed in direct speech, is neutralised in the indirect. We may as well recollect here what we said above (p. 137 ff.) about the grammatical interpretation of forms like I should come in their different applications. We can add now that that analysis is confirmed and reinforced by considerations proceeding from indirect speech. If we accept the view that there are two homonymous forms, the future and the conditional present (I should come, he would come, etc.), we shall have to say that in the sentence He said that he would come if he had time we cannot, without a context or some other additional information, tell whether he would come is a future-in-the-past or a conditional present. If, on the other hand, we prefer the view that I should come, he would come, etc., is always one and the same form (whatever name we may give to it), we shall say that in the sentence He said that he would come if he had time, he would come is that form and the context or some other additional information will only be necessary to find out what exact meaning (or application) the form has in the given case. This may perhaps be taken to be an argument in favour of the unity of the form and against the homonymity theory.
The same of course applies, to the forms I should be coming, I should have come, I should have been coming, and to the corresponding forms in the passive voice of verbs which admit of a passive, e. g. I should be invited, I should have been invited.
In all of these cases, then, the change of direct into indirect speech implies the neutralisation of an opposition existing in direct speech, and the opposite change from indirect to direct speech implies the introduction (or restoration) of an opposition which was not to be seen in the indirect speech.
Represented Speech 333
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