Indirect speech
Indirect speech, also called
reported speech or
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.