Reported Speech (Modal verbs and Passive voice)

Hi Eladio

Sounds you got the passive/report matter. Congratulation!

paco

Paco:
I have already answered this question to you. I wrote here:

Paco, there is not any English Grammar book, or other book from which I've taken my feeling that we don't have to change the passive when we're using reported speech. I just believed that, and in that way I always post this question here. It was my feeling because I hear people talking in streets and I pay a lot of attention to them (to learn), and I hear many times they were talking about passive without changing it. Now I understand one more time, people talk as they wish and not always following correct grammar rules.

Eladio

CGEL:

Conversion to indirect reported speech not a matter of grammatical rule

There is a second respect in which we must beware of being misled by the traditonal account associating backshift with indirect reported speech. Converting into indirect reprted speech, however, is not a matter of applying rules of grammar that are specific to this purpose.

{JTT: emphasis NOT mine}

When I make an indirect report of [Jill's] speech, I purport to give the content of what she said - as opposed to quoting the actual wording,

This is how backshift is to be interpreted, not as converting one tense into another.

6.2.2 Obligatory vs optional backshifting

A backshifted preterite may be pragmatically equivalent to a present tense

Very often, the use of a backshifted preterite is optional.

Factors affecting choice between backshifted and non-backshifted versions

(a)

(b)

(c)

{JTT: the following specifically addresses Paco's concern about the passive though I must admit I'm lost as to why he thinks the passive should be treated in a different manner than other voices.}

(e) Simplification

In [some] case, the non-backshifted version may be prefered precisely for its greater simplicity.

Consider:

[32]

i She asked me where I was / had been born.

In cannot be interpreted as a backshifted preterite: it can be assumed that she did not ask, "Where are you born?"

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The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course

The direct-to-indirect speech tense shift is the main piece of evidence cited to support the assignment of tense to modals. However, we demonstrate in Chapter 33, which deals with indirect speech, that the so-called rules of tesne shifting are NOT always followed by native speakers. This is especially true for modals; thus such evidence is somewaht weak.

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JTT: Paco, you should have listened to Eladio when he said,

"It was my feeling because I hear people talking in streets and I pay a lot of attention to them (to learn), and I hear many times they were talking about passive without changing it. Now I understand one more time, people talk as they wish and not always following correct grammar rules."

People who use language are the ones who determine its usage. Eladio only made one small slip up and that is understandable for everyone has long been subjected to the old lie that prescriptive grammar is somehow correct grammar. This is false false false.

People determine the rules of language. These old pedants who abandoned thinking in favor of rote memorization of prescriptions have, for too long, misled people on language. For ENLs it didn't and doesn't matter one iota, ENLs have never listened to these old canards.

For ESLs it matters a great deal. So when you, unwittingly I'm sure, pass on another language falsehood, it doesn't help Eladio and it doesn't help others who read the same thing.

Paco:

Sounds your books are telling merely that some native speakers don't do always the tense backshift in direct-to-indirect speech conversion. But I don't take it as that those books are saying ESL students always have to follow that kind of speech made by grammatically illiterate native speakers.


JTT:
That's an old falsehood, Paco but, I must admit, it is a common one. Let's do try to keep the facts straight though. It's apparent that you don't know what's grammatical or not grammatical. Without even checking or asking, you've made the completely unwarranted assumption that this applies to "illiterate native speakers".

That isn't the mark of someone who wants to find out the truth; that isn't the mark of a serious researcher; that isn't the mark of teacher of thirty years, Paco.

Eladio's question came directly because of what he's heard from native speakers on the street. Modern grammars take great pains to point out what's grammatical and what's not and I'm afraid, Paco, as good as you are, that you don't have the skills to determine which is which.

Well then, Paco, let's just leave it up to the CGEL, The Grammar Book, and numerous other language professionals, unless you'd like to find some sources that show they are mistaken.