nuances of reported speech

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fdsa - 31 Jan 2007 03:21 GMT

Hello,

My wife is an EFL student and she posed a question to me I could not
answer. She was asked to render the following sentences in reported
speech, included with her answers and the teacher's corrections:

Q1: "I didn't know that you wanted me to come over."
A1: She said that she hadn't known that he had wanted her to come
over.
C1: She said that she DIDN'T KNOW that he had wanted her to come over.

Q2: "It has been a long time since you came over last time."
A2: He said that it had been a long time since she had come over last
time.
C2: He said that it had been a long time since she CAME over last
time.

The teacher noted that in case 2. the presence of "last time" at the
end of the sentence demands that "come" be in the past, and not the
past perfect. No explanation was given for case 1.

Any explanations as to why these corrections are correct?

Thank you,
Greg

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CyberCypher - 31 Jan 2007 05:05 GMT

> My wife is an EFL student and she posed a question to me I could
> not answer. She was asked to render the following sentences in
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> C1: She said that she DIDN'T KNOW that he had wanted her to come
> over.

I agree with this one, but I don't like "come over". I'd use "go
there".

> Q2: "It has been a long time since you came over last time."
> A2: He said that it had been a long time since she had come over
> last time.
> C2: He said that it had been a long time since she CAME over last
> time.

To begin with, the original sentence is poor English. It should be:

"It has been a long time since you last came over", but this is also
poor style and word choice ("came over"), so I'd say:

"It has been a long time since your last visit" or

"It has been a long time since the last time you {came/were} here."

That would give us:

1. He said that it had been a long time since she had last come over;

2. He said that it had been a long time since the last time she had
{gone/been} there;

3. He said that it had been a long time since her last visit.

> The teacher noted that in case 2. the presence of "last time" at
> the end of the sentence demands that "come" be in the past, and
> not the past perfect. No explanation was given for case 1.
>
> Any explanations as to why these corrections are correct?

The explanation for the first sentence is "the sequence of tenses".
That's just a native-speaker thing that is universally agreed upon,
especially by speakers of different national dialects of English, but
I think we all would probably agree with the corrected first sentence.

I can't accept the explanation for the second sentence. It makes no
sense to me simply because it's poor English no matter how it's
written. I also think your wife's version is better than the teacher's
correction.

--
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
Native speaker of American English; posting from Taiwan.
"It has come to my attention that my opinions are not universally
shared." Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog, 23 Jan 2007; http://
dilbertblog.typepad.com/

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jinhyun - 31 Jan 2007 05:45 GMT

> Hello,
>
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> Thank you,
> Greg

Your wife is right on each ocassion.
'She said that she didn't know is indirect speech' for 'She said "I
don't know.".' You wouldn't say 'She said that she doesn't know'
although 'She says that she doesn't know' is O.K. She said 'I didn't
know' should only be turned to 'She said that she hadn't known'.
In the second one,'she had come over' is better since this clause is
obliged to be in the same tense(lowbrow sense of tense) as the
previous clause 'it had been a long time' which is in the past-
perfect.

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Don Phillipson - 31 Jan 2007 17:06 GMT

> My wife is an EFL student and she posed a question to me I could not
> answer. She was asked to render the following sentences in reported
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> over.
> C1: She said that she DIDN'T KNOW that he had wanted her to come over.

A1 uses the pluperfect past tense (past perfect).
C1 uses the simple past tense.
C1 is nowadays much more common and is preferred for
general use. (The pluperfect tense remains available
for more elaborate statements about past time.)

> Q2: "It has been a long time since you came over last time."
> A2: He said that it had been a long time since she had come over last
> time.
> C2: He said that it had been a long time since she CAME over last
> time.

The case is similar: SINCE SHE HAD COME may be
interpreted as the pluperfect while SINCE SHE CAME
cannot be thus interpreted. But the practical difference
in case 2 weighs less than in case 1 which is less ambiguous.

Signature

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

nuances of reported speech