Direct speech and indirect speech:

A functional study*
Charles N. Li

1. Introduction
Direct speech and indirect speech are similar, yet different. Consider
two examples, one illustrating direct speech, the other indirect speech:
(1) John said, "I'm tired."
(2) John said (that) he was tired.
Let us first observe the similarities between (1) and (2). Both have the
same verb, "said" with the same subject, "John". Each contains a clause
signalling the content of a speech act. Although the two clauses are
different in form, they both convey the same message. Thus, at first
sight, the similarities between (1) and (2) appear so striking that early
transformationalists were motivated to propose that (2) should be derived
from (1) via an optional transformation called the "Indirect Discourse
Formation". 1
The differences between (1) and (2), on the other hand, are manifold.
The most readily observable ones are syntactic: first, the pronouns in (1)
and (2) are different; second, the tenses in (1) and (2) are different;
third, (2) but not (1) may have the complimentizer "that". Finally,
Longacre (1976) noted that the immediate constituent grouping in terms
of phonological pause and intonation pattern is different between (1)
and (2). But the phonologic grouping of the subject and the verb of
saying holds true only in verb-medial languages. In verb-final languages,
for example, a direct quote is often placed between the subject and the
verb of saying.
On the semantic level, Partee (1971) noticed that the surface form of
the direct quote, i.e. the exact wording of the quotation, is part of the
meaning of the whole sentence. Thus, even if we accept the synonymity
of (3) and (4),
* Preparation of this article was supported by National Science Foundation Grant
BNS 83-08220.

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Charles . Li

(3) John said that this theorem was false.

(4) John said that this theorem was not true,
we cannot consider (5) and (6) synonymous.
(5) John said, "This theorem is false."
(6) John said, "This theorem is not true."
In other words, even though "This theorem is false" is equivalent to
"This theorem is not true", these represent two different utterances. (5)
and (6) each attribute a different utterance to John, and, therefore,
cannot be synonymous. This observation led Partee (1971) and others to
reject the transformational derivation of indirect speech from direct
speech.
On the functional level, Wierzbicka (1974) pointed out that direct
speech is characterized by its "theatrical" nature. 2 Wierzbicka's analysis
of direct and indirect speech is insightful. In this article, I will pursue the
implications of Wierzbicka's study in light of evidence from a variety of
languages. Unlike Wierzbicka, however, I will not be concerned with
such questions of generative linguistics as "What is the underlying
representation of a sentence" or "Does direct speech underly indirect
speech". The theoretical thrust of this study is a functional one, i.e., I
will examine the structure of direct and indirect speech in terms of their
communicative functions.

2. The syntax of direct and indirect speech

2.1. Pronominalization
In section I, it was stated that the pronouns in sentences (1) and (2) are
different. Among all languages which have both direct and indirect
speech, the existence of different pronominalization strategies for the
two constructions is universal. I will state the various strategies as
follows.
A:

The first and second person pronoun in a direct quote are respectively co-referential with the reported speaker and the reported
addressee in the clause immediately outside of the quotation.

The following illustrate strategy A:

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Direct and indirect speech

(7)

John said to Mary, "I love you."

(8)

John told Mary that Peter said to Ellen, "I love you."

31

Sentences (7) and (8) demonstrate that the references of the first and
second pronouns in a quotation are conditioned by the reported speaker
and the reported addressee in the clause immediately outside the quotation.
B:

The third person pronoun in a direct quote must not be co-referential

with the reported speaker or the reported addressee in the clause
immediately outside the quotation.

Consider the following examples:

(9)

John said to Peter, "He was sick."

(10)

John said to Mary, "Peter told Ellen that he loved her."

(11)

About Peter, John said to Paul, "He was sick."

In sentence (9), the third person pronoun in the quote cannot be coreferential with either "John" or "Peter", the reported speaker and the
reported addressee respectively, in the clause immediately outside the
quotation. Sentence (10) contains an indirect quote embedded in a direct
quote. Again, the third person pronouns in (10) cannot be co-referential
with either "John" or "Mary", the reported speaker and the reported
addressee respectively, in the clause immediately outside the quote. In
sentence (11), the third person pronoun in the quote is co-referential
with "Peter", an NP which is neither the reported speaker nor the
reported addressee.
Let us now examine pronominalization strategies in indirect speech.
C:

The I ^ r S t , 1 person in an indirect quote refers to either

( second J

r Pr eeSPeaker}- 00

{ d s

re

Prted {

SeJL

the direct quote in which that indirect quote is embedded.

For example,
(12)

John told Mary that I love you.

(13)

John said to Mary, "Peter told Ellen that I love you."

(14)

You told me that I took you to San Francisco last year.

In (12), the first and second person pronouns in the indirect quote refer
respectively to the reporter-speaker and the addressee. In (13), the first

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Charles . Li

and second person pronouns are in an indirect quote embedded in a

direct quote, and therefore, refer respectively to the reported speaker
and the reported addressee of the direct quote. (14) shows that if the
clause with the verb of saying contains first and second persons, which
are co-referential with the reporter-speaker and addressee respectively,
then these pronouns are co-referential with the first and second person
pronouns respectively in the indirect quote.
D:

Third person pronominalization in an indirect quote follows the

general rule of pronominalization in a language.

In other words, there is no constraint peculiar to indirect speech governing the reference of a third person pronoun in an indirect quote. If a
language allows a pronoun to refer only to an antecedent noun phrase,
then a third person pronoun in an indirect quote may be co-referential
with any antecedent noun phrase in the discourse. For example, in the
Mandarin Chinese sentence (15), the third person pronoun in the
indirect quote may be co-referential with any preceding NP in the
sentence or in the preceding discourse.

(15)

Zhangsan dui Lisi shuo Wanger juede fa hen qiguai

*
~t
Zhangsan to Lisi say Wanger feel
s/he very strange.
Zhangsan said to Lisi that Wanger felt s/he was very strange.

If a language, such as English, allows the "preceding" rule of pronoun

reference to be superseded under certain conditions (e.g. a pronoun may
be co-referential with a following NP if the pronoun is in certain
subordinate clauses while the NP is in the main clause), the same
condition will allow the reference of a third person pronoun in an
indirect quote to supersede the "preceding" rule. Sentence (16) illustrates this:
(16)

John said to Peter that before he left, Paul was O.K.

I have gone to some length describing the referential strategy of

pronouns in direct and indirect speech because it is often the only
diagnostic criterion available in many languages for distinguishing a
direct quote from an indirect quote out of discourse context. Consider,
for example, the following sentence from Mandarin Chinese:

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Direct and indirect speech

(17)

Zhangsan shuo wo
Zhangsan say I
Zhangsan says I'm

33

lei
le
tire Perfective
tired.

If the first person pronoun wo "I" is co-referential with Zhangsan, we

know that (17) contains a direct quote on the basis of A. However, if wo
"I" is co-referential with the reporter-speaker of sentence (17), we can
conclude on the basis of the principle stated in C that (17) has an indirect
quote.
Some languages have unusual pronominal strategies in direct and
indirect speech. Mambila, a Bantu language described by Perrin (1974)
is a good example. Mambila has a special pronoun neh which occurs only
in reported speech and which refers only to the reported speaker. The
following Mambila sentences are taken from Perrin (1974):
(18)

woo jia neh a neh

nda
you say me to reported go
speaker
You said to me you would go.

(18) alone cannot establish whether a clause containing neh is a direct

quote or an indirect quote since neh merely refers to the reported
speaker without distinguishing first, second or third person.
Sentence (19) shows that neh occurs in an indirect quote (on the basis
of ) since the third person pronoun bu is co-referential with the
reported addresse, torn "rabbit".
(19)

Alhaji jia torn

Alhaji say rabbit

a neh
kwuli bu
to reported thank third person
speaker
pronoun
Alhaji said to the rabbit that he thanked him.

Similarly, (20) shows that neh occurs in an indirect quote (on the basis
of C (i)) since the second person pronoun chi "your" is co-referential
with the second person pronoun in the matrix clause, which, in turn, is
co-referential with the reporter-speaker.
(20)

woo jia meh a heh neh

derua a
chi
you say me to give reported book genitive your
speaker
You told me to give you your book.

The evidence cited by Perrin (1974) indicates that neh occurs only in
indirect quotes, contrary to her claim that neh is used only in direct
quotes. 3

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Charles . Li

2.2. Deictics
Besides pronouns, deictics such as 'this/that', 'here/there', 'now/then'
and 'come/go' constitute another domain in which systematic differences
exist between direct and indirect speech. Let me illustrate with an
example. First, consider the speech context in which, at school, John
said to Paul in the presence of Peter, "Come here and take care of this
mess!". Secondly consider a different speech context in which Peter was
telling some people at home several days later what transpired between
John and Paul. If Peter were to give a direct quote of what John said, he
would say:
(21)

John told Paul, "Come here and take care of this mess!"

However, if Peter were to render John's words in an indirect quote, he

would say:
(22)

John told Paul to go there and take care of that mess.

The difference between (21) and (22) lies in the use of opposite members
of such deictic pairs as 'come/go', 'here/there', and 'this/that'. The
reason behind the choice of opposite members of these deictic pairs is
the different points of reference. In an indirect quote, the speaker
normally uses himself/herself as a spatial point of reference and the time
of utterance as a temporal point of reference. In a direct quote, the
speaker must suspend the normal practice and use the points of reference of the quoted speaker.

2.3. Syntactic and semantic role

An indirect quote is traditionally assumed to be a subordinate clause
serving as the direct object of the verb of saying. Partee (1973) suggested
that the direct quote is not a syntactic or semantic part of the sentence
containing it, but did not question the subordinate clause role of the
indirect quote. Munro (1982) pointed out a variety of syntactic differences between sentences containing indirect quotes and sentences containing direct quotes in many languages, further strengthening our impression of the different syntactic and semantic roles of the direct and
indirect quote. Whereas the fact that direct quote and indirect quotes are
different syntactically and semantically is incontrovertible, the nature of
their differences may vary from language to language. In English, for

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example, aside from pronominalization and deictics discussed above, we

can cite at least three syntactic differences between the direct and
indirect quotes: (i) the complementizer, "that", may occur with an
indirect quote but not with a direct quote; (ii) the indirect quote but not
the direct quote must bear the same tense as the verb of saying; (iii)
there is an absence of an intonation break between a direct quote and the
verb of saying, but not between an indirect quote and the verb of saying.
On the other hand, the English verb, "say", in its unstressed form, is
often semantically bleached and displays the characteristics of a hearsay
evidential. This hearsay evidential characteristic of "say" is especially
prominent when the indirect quote is fronted as in (23):
(23)

He didn't want to play tennis, John said.

If we contrast (23) with (24) containing a direct quote,

(24)

"I don't want to play tennis", John said.

we can observe that the differences between the syntactic-semantic roles

of the direct quote and the indirect quote are minimal. Neither the direct
quote of (24) nor the indirect quote of (23) seem to play the role of the
direct object or patient of the verb of saying. Since the semantic function
of "say" tends to lean in the direction of a hearsay evidential or an
epistemic quantifier, the new information transmitted by sentences such
as (23) and (24) rests in the quoted speech, whether it is direct or
indirect.
Let us consider another language, Tikar. 4 In Tikar, it is the direct
quote, but not the indirect quote, which must be introduced by the
complementizer /. Sentences (25) and (26) are examples of direct
quotes in Tikar:
f

* .

(25)

SWE she n/
wu limmi k 1
m beni mwum kirn
ant say to him that you know not that I caught man with force-Q
The ant said to him, "Don't you know that I caught a man by force?"

(26)

she kpulu

Kpulu
wu yib m ndem
he say to turtle that Turtle, you stole me field
He said to the turtle, "Turtle, you stole my field!"

The pronominalization strategy indicated by the co-referentiality in

(25) and (26) shows that the sentences contain direct quotes.
According to Jackson (personal communication), one of the forms of
indirect speech in Tikar occurs without a verb of saying and without a
complementizer. Sentences (27) and (28) illustrate:

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Charles . Li

(27)

N, n nywael ime
hje
he he escapes
starvation
He (said/thought) he's escaped starvation.

(28)

Foro
n, n
ywime Bs
Hyena he he
F U T arrive
The hyena, he (says) he will come.

The use of the third person pronoun in (27) and (28) referring to the
reported speaker demonstrates that both contain indirect quotes.
The English and Tikar examples suggest that the differences between
direct and indirect speech can vary dramatically from language to
language and that their differences cannot be accounted for by the claim
that the indirect quote is a complement of the verb of saying, whereas
the direct quote is not a syntactic or semantic part of the sentence
containing it.
Haiman and Thompson (1984) reject the contention that indirect
quote is "subordinate" in a variety of ways that the direct quote is not.
To the extent that Haiman and Thompson (1984) are correct in showing
that the traditional notion of "subordination" is merely a cover term for
a number of independent properties describing clausal relations, it is best
not to subsume the syntactic and semantic differences between direct
and indirect quote under "subordination". Instead, it might be profitable to consider those differences along a dimension of "fusion" between
clauses. Givon (1980) proposed a similiar notion, "binding", which
refers to the influence of the main clause agent over the complement
clause agent. "Fusion" can be interpreted as referring to the degree of
syntactic-semantic influence or control of one clause over another in
interclausal relationships. The following examples show an increasing
degree of syntactic-semantic influence of the first clause over the second
and therefore, display a higher degree of fusion between the two clauses
from sentence to sentence:
(29)

John went to school and Mary stayed home.

(30)

John lived in a bad district, but was robbed only once.

(31)

John claimed that Peter went to school.

(32)

John ordered Peter to go to school.

(33)

John remembered to go to school.

In (29), the two clauses are independent syntactically and semantically. The only clausal relationship conveyed by (29) is that according to

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37

the view of the speaker, there is a vague pragmatic bond between the
events denoted by the two clauses. (30) demonstrates a higher degree of
the fusion between its two clauses than (29) because the subject of the
second clause must be interpreted as co-referential with the subject of
the first clause. In (31), the second clause is incorporated into the first
clause as a constituent, indicating greater fusion than either (29) or (30).
In (32) and (33), the second clauses are not only incorporated into their
respective first clauses, but they have also lost their independent clause
structure. For instance, the verb of the second clauses of (32) and (33) is
non-finite, and its tense and aspect must be interpreted according to that
of the verb of the first clause. Finally, (33) shows a greater degree of
fusion than (32) because the truth value of the second clause in (33), but
not in (32), is determined by the truth value of the first clause. Thus
"John remembered to go to school" implies "John went to school",
whereas "John didn't remember to go to school" implies that "John
didn't go to school". 5
Both the direct quote and the indirect quote are on the weak end of
the fusion scale in terms of their respective relationships with the verb of
saying. One reason for this is that the verb of saying tends to take on the
features of a hearsay evidential. However, the direct quote is even more
weakly fused with the verb of saying than the indirect quote. Thus, only
the direct quote has the full latitude of an independent sentence. For
instance, only the direct quote, but not the indirect quote, may take the
form of a performative speech act such as a command or a question:
(34)

John said, "What did Mary buy?"

(35)

John said, "Be quiet!"

In most languages, the indirect quote has some feature which signals
that it is more fused with the clause containing the verb of saying than
the direct quote. Examples of such features were cited by Munro (1982)
as evidence that the indirect quote, but not the direct quote, behaves as
the object of the verb of saying.

3. Functional characteristics of direct and indirect speech

Let us recall sentences (1) and (2), the two simple examples of direct and
indirect speech in English:
(1)

John said, "I'm tired."

(2)

John said (that) he was tired.

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Charles . Li

Consider the two sentences in a communicative context. Both involve

four elements:
i)
ii)
iii)
iv)

the
the
the
the

reported speaker or the original speaker

reported speech
reporter-speaker or simply the speaker
hearer or the addressee

In direct speech, the reporter-speaker plays the role of the reported/

original speaker. The reporter-speaker intends for the hearer to believe
that the form, the content and the non-verbal messages such as gestures
and facial expressions of the reported speech originate from the reported
speaker. That is where the theatrical feature noted by Wierzbicka comes
in: the reporter-speaker acts as the reported speaker when s/he utters the
direct quote. The full communicative picture of sentence (1), then, is
composed of two parts. In one part, the reporter-speaker identifies the
reported speaker. In the other part, the reporter-speaker acts as the
reported speaker. The full communicative situation may be represented
by (36):
(36i)

reporter-speaker identifies reported speaker

reporter-

) speaker

acts as reported
=> speaker -

[form]
[content]
" non-verbal
.messages .

direct
reported
speech

In indirect speech, the reporter-speaker does not play the role of the
reported speaker.6 The form and the non-verbal messages of the reported speech belong to the reporter-speaker. The reporter-speaker intends
for the hearer to believe that only the content of the reported speech
originates from the reported speaker. Thus, the communicative situation
involving a sentence such as (2) may be depicted in (37).
(37i)
ii)

reporter-speaker identifies reported speaker

[form]
non-verbal
reporter-speaker
.messages
reported speaker

[content]

indirect
reported
speech

Given (37), we can understand how the reporter-speaker may communicate his own feelings through the form (e.g. intonation) and non-verbal
messages of the reported speech as a comment on the content of the
reported speech. Sentence (2), for example, may be uttered with a great
deal of disgust, anger, or sarcasm. Such emotional overtones would be

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39

communicated by the intonation, gestures and facial expression of the

reporter-speaker. The hearer will understand that those emotional overtones do not originate from the reported speaker, but constitute a
comment by the reporter-speaker on either the reported speaker or the
content of the reported speech or both.
In direct speech, the reporter-speaker does not have the option of
communicating a comment on the content of the reported speech as s/he
utters the direct quote, because as (36) shows, not only the form and the
content of the reported speech, but also the non-verbal messages accompanying it, originate from the reported speaker. Thus, if the reporterspeaker utters the reported speech with anger, for instance, the hearer
will interpret the anger as part of the message originally communicated
by the reported speaker.
The analysis provided in (36) and (37) should make it clear why
sentences such as (5) and (6) cannot be synonymous.
(5)

John said, "This theorem is false."

(6)

John said, "This theorem is not true."

The analysis in (36) and (37) should also make it clear why a direct quote
should have the full latitude of an independent sentence: the form (not
only the substance) the direct quote also originates from the reported
speaker.

4. Corroborative evidence
In this section I will cite four pieces of evidence which corroborate the
preceding functional analysis of direct and indirect speech.

4.1. Languages without indirect speech

Direct speech is universal; indirect speech is not. Paez,7 for example, is a
language without indirect speech. Gerdel and Slocum (1976) noted that
"indirect quotation sentences" in Paez only employ verbs such as
"know", "see", . . . etc., as their matrix verb. There is no Paez indirect
quotation sentence whose matrix verb is a verb of saying. Other known
examples of languages without indirect speech are Navajo and Amharic.

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Charles . Li

The analysis in Section III shows that indirect speech is a more

complex communicative strategy than direct speech. Direct speech involves reproducing or mimicking the speech of the reported speaker,
whereas indirect speech involves rephrasing or paraphrasing the speech
of the reported speaker. Clearly, mimicking is a simpler undertaking
than paraphrasing. Hence, it is not surprising that for reported speech
the mimicking strategy occurs in all languages, whereas the paraphrasing
strategy does not. After all, mimicking is employed from the onset of
first language acquisition. It is an innate ability in human beings, pongid
and many simian species.
There is also a cultural reason for the non-occurrence of indirect
speech in languages such as Paez. In Paez culture, a person is not
allowed to quote by taking the responsibility for the quote himself/
herself - which is the implication of an indirect quote. A quote must be
entirely attributable to the original speaker, in form and content - which
is the strategy of a direct quote.

4.2. The use of direct quote in narrative

Several of the linguists who participated in the project "Study of
Discourse from Folk Literature in Aboriginal Languages of Colombia,
Panama, and Ecuador" reported that direct quote, but not indirect
quote, typically occurs as the peak of narrative. Mansen and Mansen
(1976) noted that quotes and dialogue fill the content of the peak of
Guajiro 8 narrative. Waltz (1976) observed that direct speech is often
used at the peak of Guanano 9 narrative. Borman (1977) stated that
quotes, including onomatopoetic quotes, and dialogue lend vividness to
the peak episodes of Cofan 10 narrative. Witte (1977) pointed out that
quotes and dialogue occur most prominently at the peak of Andoke 11
narrative and that they contribute to the vividness at the narrative peak.
The observations cited above corroborate Wierzbicka's theatrical
feature of direct speech. Since direct speech requires the reporterspeaker to act out the role of the reported speaker, it is a natural vehicle
for vivid and dramatic presentation. Thus, direct quote is the most
common mode of expression at the peak of oral narrative in many
languages.

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4.3. Speaker's involvement

Chafe (1982) pointed out that direct quotes express the reporter-speaker's involvement in the events s/he is reporting. Schwartz (personal
communication) has noted that when his children become very involved
in the events they are recounting, they use direct quotes exclusively,
often with "go" as the verb of saying. A natural consequence of
involvement in the event one is reporting is to act out the event. That is
precisely what direct speech is: the reporter-speaker acting out the role
of the reported speaker.

5. Evidentials and direct/indirect speech

Evidentials specify the nature of the source of information in speech: Is it
hearsay or the speaker's own previous experience? Is it imagination or
conjecture? The function of evidentials is to enable the speaker and
hearer to gauge the authenticity of a statement. Thus, direct quote and
indirect quote are forms of evidentiality. A direct quote communicates a
more authentic piece of information than an indirect quote in the sense
that a direct quote implies a greater fidelity to the source of information
that an indirect quote. Languages which do not have indirect speech may
be viewed as languages which do not allow adulteration of the source of
information in reported speech. Some languages which have both direct
and indirect speech allow the use of indirect speech only if the reporterspeaker is unsure about the original speech. Cuiva12 is such an example,
although in her study of Cuiva discourse, Kerr (1977) states that Cuiva
indirect speech also occurs when the reporter-speaker translates an
original speech into another language for the benefit of the hearer. Kerr
(1977) writes: "Because [the reporter-speaker] cannot use a direct quote
in such circumstances, he uses an indirect quote to relay the substance of
what was said in the other language" (p. 155).
Thurgood (1981) pointed out that direct speech and indirect speech
are manifestations of evidentiality in English grammar. Modern English,
however, has also developed other forms of reported speech. One
frequently cited form is "free indirect speech" which contains the
features of both direct and indirect speech. An example cited by Polanyi
(1982) is,

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Charles . Li

(38)

And he was telling Dolly, I don't want Dolly.

The co-reference between the reported speaker and the first person
pronoun in (38) indicates direct speech. But the presence of "Dolly"
instead of a second person pronoun "you" points to indirect speech.
Free indirect speech, then, is a device which simultaneously presents the
third person perspective of the reporter-speaker and the first person
perspective of the reported speaker. Such a device sacrifices the distinction between direct and indirect speech in terms of evidentiality.13

6. Conclusion
I have presented a functional analysis of direct and indirect speech in this
study. The analysis corroborartes a number of phenomena observed in a
wide variety of languages. Problems such as "What is the underlying
representation?" or more specifically, "Does direct speech underly
indirect speech?" might have motivated earlier investigators to examine
the relation between meaning and structure. However, they do not lead
us to a better understanding of either the structure or the function of
language. In addition, looking at grammar in terms of problems of that
sort may lead to pvseudo-problems. For example, Wierzbicka's insightful
study (1974) incorporated into her notion of underlying representation
pragmatic information describing the communicative functions of direct
and indirect speech; but she also created some pseudo-problems, because her study was carried out within the theoretical framework of
generative linguistics. Thus, after postulating elaborate underlying representations which capture most of the features of direct and indirect
speech, she conceded that those underlying representations could not
account for such utterances as
(39)

John told Peter something.

But (39) is simply a case of indirect speech in which the reporter-speaker

has suppressed the content of the reported speech. In terms of the
analysis provided in (37), the utterance (39) may be represented as
follows:
(40i)

reporter-speaker identifies reported speaker

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Direct and indirect speech

reporter-speaker

[form]
non-verbal
.messages

reported-speaker >

[content]

43

indirect
reported
speech

The reason for preferring a functional approach to the study of

language is straigthforward: language serves homo sapiens as their
means of communication. If a language is a means of communication,
then, it is clear that its structure must be adapted to its communicative
function.

Acknowledgement
I wish to thank Sandra S. Thompson for bringing to my attention various items of literature
on the subject of direct and indirect speech. I also wish to thank Arthur Schwartz for
discussing with me the nature of direct and indirect speech. Finally, I am grateful to Talmy
Givn, Ellen Jackson, Petr Sgall and Sandra Thompson for their important comments,
suggestions and criticism of an earlier version of this paper.

Notes
1. See Kuno (1972) in which the direct speech sentence is postulated not only as the
underlying representation of indirect speech sentences with such matrix verbs as
"expect", "claim", "worry", "believe", etc. . . .
2. Wierzbicka (1974) considers the theatrical nature of direct speech as part of the
meaning of direct speech. Clearly, she uses the term 'meaning' in a broad sense to
include not only the lexical and grammatical meanings, but also the communicative
function of the utterance.
3. Perrin claims that neh is used in direct quote because (i) it only refers to the reported
speaker in the matrix clause, and (ii) only direct speech takes its pronoun orientation
from the clause in which it is immediately embedded. Since (ii) is clearly false (see
und D above), Perrin's claim is vacuous unless sentences such as the following [(a)] are
acceptable in Mambila:
(a)

Alhaji jia torn

a neh
kwull woo
Alhaji say rabbit to reported thank you
speaker
The co-referentiality between torn "rabbit" und woo "you" would establish (on the
basis of a above) that the clause neh kwull woo is a direct quote.
4. Tikar is a Bantoid language of the Benue-Congo group spoken in Cameroon. The
Tikar data in this paper was provided by Ellen Jackson.
5. See Karttunen (1971) for more discussion on implicative verbs.

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44

Charles . Li

6. Jackson (personal communication) cited Tikar as an exception. According to Jackson,

the Tikar reporter-speaker plays a partial role of the reported speaker in indirect
speech, i.e. while the pronominalization is that of indirect speech, intonation and
tense-aspect indicate direct speech. In the following example, the pronouns indicate
indirect speech, but the question is posed with reported speaker intonation and
question particle:
sh myi
1 Si
i
yen swum ss
n neemzi yi
mbyi
he say to his wife that they Quote saw thing that he sent
them before-Q
He said to his wife, have they (wife and children) seen what he sent them before?

7.
8.
9.
10.

11.
12.
13.

This type of Tikar example posses a challenge to the traditional dichotomy of direct
speech vs. indirect speech seen as two distinct categories where pronominalization
serves as the diagnostic signal for category classification.
Paez is a member of the Macro-Chibchan linguistic family of South America.
Guajiro belongs to the Arawakan family. Its speakers live in the border region between
Colombia and Venezuela.
Guanano is a member of the Tucanoan family. Its speakers number fewer than 1000 in
Colombia and Brazil.
Cofan has about 600 speakers along the Ecuador-Colombia border in the eastern
foothills of the Andes Mountains. It has been claimed to be a language isolate or a
member of the Chibchan family. Borman (1977) remarked that Cofan exhibits Chibchan features as well as features of Western Tocanoan.
The Andoke language is an isolate according to Witte (1977). It has less than one
hundred speakers all living near the Caquet River of Colombia.
Cuiva is a Guahiban language of Colombia and Venezuela.
Polanyi (1982) cites several other forms of reported speech. I will not delve into them
here since they are beyond the scope of this study.

References
Borman, . B. 1977. Cofan Paragraph Structure and Function, in Discourse Grammar,
Part 3, ed. by R. E. Longacre. pp. 289-338.
Chafe, Wallace L. 1982. Integration and Involvement in Speaking, Writing and Oral
Literature, in Spoken and Written Language, ed. by D. Tannen, pp. 35-44.
Gerdel, Florence L. and M. C. Slocum. 1976. Paez Discourse, Paragraph and Sentence
Structure, in Discourse Grammar, Part 1, ed. by R. E. Longacre. pp. 259-443.
Givn, Talmy. 1980. The Binding Hierarchy and the Typology of Complements. Studies in
Language, 4.3, pp. 333-377.
Haiman, John and Sandra A. Thompson. 1984. 'Subordination' in Universal Grammar, in
Proceedings from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Hopper, Paul and Sandra A. Thompson, (ed.) 1982. Studies in Transitivity. New York:
Academic Press.
Karttunen, Lauri. 1971. Implicative Verbs. Language, 47, pp. 340-58.
Kerr, Isabel. 1977. The Centrality of Dialogue in Cuiva Discourse Structure, in Discourse
Grammar, Part 3, ed. by R. E. Longacre. pp. 133-174.

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Direct and indirect speech

45

Kuno, Susumu. 1972. Pronominalization, Reflexivization, and Direct Discourse. Linguistic Inquiry, III.2, 161-196.
Longacre, Robert E. 1976a. An Anatomy of Speech Notions. Lisse, Belgium: Peter de
Ridder Press.
Longacre Robert E., ed., 1976b. Discourse Grammar: Studies in Indigenous Languages of
Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador, Part 1. Published by the Summer Institute of
Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.
Longacre, Robert E., ed., 1977. Discourse Grammar: Studies in Indigenous Languages of
Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador, Part 3. Published by the Summer Institute of
Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.
Mansen, Richard and Karie. 1976. The Structure of Sentence and Paragraph in Guajiro
Narrative Discourse, in Discourse Grammar Part 1, ed. by R. E. Longacre. pp. 147-258.
Munro, Pamela. 1982. On the Transitivity of 'say' Verbs, in Studies in Transitivity, ed. by
P. Hopper and S. A. Thompson, 1982.
Partee, Barbara H. 1973. The Syntax and Semantics of Quotation, in A Festschrift for
Morris Halle, ed. by P. Kiparsky and S. Anderson. New York: Holt, 410-18.
Perrin, Mona. 1974. Direct and Indirect Speech in Mambila. Journal of Linguistics 10:
27-37.
Polanyi, Livia. 1982. Literary Complexity in Everyday Storytelling, in Spoken and Written
Language, ed. by D. Tannen, pp. 155-170.
Thurgood, Graham. 1981. The Historical Development of the Akha Evidentials System, in
Proceedings from the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society,
pp. 295-302.
Waltz, Nathan E. 1976. Discourse Functions of Guanano Sentence and Paragraph, in
Discourse Grammar, Part 1, ed. by R. E. Longacre. pp. 21-146.
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1974. The Semantics of Direct and Indirect Discourse. Papers in
Linguistics, 7:3/4, 267-307.
Witte, Paul. 1977. Functions of the Andoke Copulative in Discourse and Sentence
Structure, in Discourse Grammar, Part 3, ed. by R. E. Longacre. pp. 253-288.

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