Reported speech forms a dedicated syntactic domain

Abstract

In many languages, expressions of the type ‘x said: “p”’, ‘x said that p’ or ‘allegedly, p’ share properties with common syntactic types such as constructions with subordination, paratactic constructions, and constructions with sentence-level adverbs. On closer examination, however, they often turn out to be atypical members of these syntactic classes. In this paper we argue that a more coherent picture emerges if we analyse these expressions as a dedicated syntactic domain in itself, which we refer to as ‘reported speech’. Based on typological observations we argue for the idiosyncrasy of reported speech as a syntactic class. The article concludes with a proposal for a cross-linguistic characterisation that aims at capturing this broadly conceived domain of reported speech with a single semantic definition.

Speaking for Bakhtin: Two Interpretations of Reported Speech A Response to Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018)

“…If we take Vološinov (1973) seriously, there is a second reason for why refraining from defining reported speech on the basis of SAY and THINK is preferable: reported speech is an entry point to studying the grammar of Bakhtinian dialogue. For this reason, Spronck (2015a) seeks to characterise reported speech using more general grammatical meanings, such as evidentiality and modality (also see Spronck (2017), Spronck and Nikitina (2019)). I fully accept that these definitions of reported speech may be simplified and improved, and am grateful for Goddard andWierzbicka (2018, 2019) to engage in debate around them.…”

“…What examples such as (5) indicate is that Ungarinyin makes a distinction between the meanings SAY and THINK (which, as per Wierzbicka (1996, 50) could therefore still be semantic primes) and the syntactic structure used for reported speech (also see Spronck 2015b). On the basis of these and other observations Spronck and Nikitina (2019) argue that reported speech should be analysed as a syntactic construction in its own right, more on a par with epistemic expressions (i.e. modal and evidential structures) than regular transitive/intransitive clauses headed by a specific verb (also see Rumsey 1982;McGregor 1994;Spronck 2017).…”

“…Wierzbicka (1974), and, more recently, Goddard and Wierzbicka (2018), critically engage with this philosophical literature, particularly by responding to the work of Donald Davidson (1968) and Mikhail Bakhtin/Valentin Vološinov (1973). They explicitly present their definitions of direct and indirect speech as an alternative to a definition proposed in Spronck (2015a), which was developed further in Spronck (2017) and Spronck and Nikitina (2019).…”

Untitled

“…The analysis in this paper rests on a recent finding that the present perfect in Bulgarian exercises the function of "grammaticalizing" certain types of sentences ill-formed and belonging to a particular semantico-syntactic schema (Kabakčiev 2018). The present perfect and perfects in general are found in many European and other languages but there are also languages without perfects (Comrie 1985, Bybee et al 1994: 54, 61, Dahl 1985: 129ff, Aikhenvald 2004; the abovementioned schema, represented by clauses such as X said that and adverbials such as according to, probably, etc., is widely found across languages (Aikhenvald 2008, Spronck andNikitina 2019) 1 and prevalent in all modern ones, including English. To demonstrate the grammaticalizing function, compare Bulgarian (1a-b) incorrect sentences with witnessed forms, and their grammatical correspondences (2a-b) with present perfect forms, non-witnessed:…”

Reported speech as a dedicated grammatical domain – and why defenestration should not be thrown out the window

“…Perhaps the most significant contribution of Spronck and Nikitina (2019) (henceforth S&N) is that it proposes, albeit perhaps not for the first time, criteria that must be met by a construction in any given language in order to count as a reported speech construction. This attempt at a language independent definition of reported speech constructions paves the way for motivated cross-linguistic comparison, ensuring that what are compared in the languages are indeed comparables.…”