Tag: (E) [direct speech]

(2019) Reported speech

Goddard, Cliff, & Wierzbicka, Anna (2019). Reported speech as a pivotal human phenomenon: Commentary on Spronck and Nikitina. Linguistic Typology, 23(1), 167-175.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2019-0006

Abstract:

The authors take issue with the target paper on a number of theoretical and methodological matters. The most significant of these is the need to de-Anglicize linguistic terminology. The use of complex, poorly-defined, English-bound terms, including technical terms such as semiotic, ‘demonstratedness’, epistemic, modality, and representation, as well as ordinary, but equally English-bound, words such as report(ed), message, discourse, and utterance is unnecessary. Instead, people’s speech practices should be described in terms that are accessible to the people concerned.

Rather than trying to bring everything that may be counted as “reported speech” under a single, extremely abstract characterization, the authors favour an approach that analyses these diverse constructions one at a time, so to speak, linking them all to the prototypical direct speech construction in a family resemblance fashion. To make this more concrete, they briefly analyse the Yankunytjatjara quotative particle kunyu and the English say that… construction.

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(2019) English, Goemai – Direct and indirect speech

Goddard, Cliff, & Anna Wierzbicka (2019). Direct and indirect speech revisited: Semantic universals and semantic diversity. In Alessandro Capone, Manuel García-Carpintero, & Alessandra Falzone (Eds.), Indirect reports and pragmatics in the world languages (pp. 173-199). Cham: Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_9

Abstract:

The new interpretations of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ speech presented in this chapter are framed using simple and cross-translatable words and phrases, i.e. using a language that is transparent both to linguists and to the speakers whose ways of speaking the analyst is trying to understand.

In relation to ‘direct speech’, the authors present linguistic generalizations about two forms of quoted speech, which, they claim, are very likely to be found in all languages of the world. The semantics of logophoric constructions in West African languages are examined next, with particular reference to Goemai, which has been claimed to have no direct speech. It is argued instead that logophoric constructions in Goemai are forms of direct speech on any reasonable, semantically-based definition and that, until proof of the contrary, direct speech is a language universal.

The final part of the paper is about ‘indirect speech’, focusing on the English say that… construction.

An overall theme of the paper is that specialized and hybrid forms of reported speech, including logophoric speech, reflect cultural concerns and practices.

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