Indirect Narration

Question

Will the words like "this, now, ago, here........" be changed when the tense of the reported verb is not changed?
e.g. You will say, "She lives here."
=> Will the word "here" be changed into "there" or remain unchanged in the above sentence?

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

Only the verb changes. All the other words (subject, objects, prepositional phrases, adverbs) stay the same.

You say, "She lives there."
You say that she lives there.

You said, "She lives there."
You said that she lived there.

You said, "She lived there three years ago."
You said that she had lived there three years ago.

You said, "She will move in tomorrow."
You said that she would move in tomorrow.

GPY · Answer

It depends on the reporter's perspective. To the extent that the person reporting is more likely to be close to the things mentioned if the reported verb is not backshifted, words like "this" and "here" probably have a greater tendency to remain unchanged in that case. However, it still depends on context.

"now" cannot be shifted to "then" if the reported verb remains in the present tense.

Clive · Answer

Pronouns can also require change.
eg Tom says to Mary, 'I love you'.

If I am reporting this later to Mary (maybe she forgot

), I can say 'Tom said that he loved you'.

But if I am reporting it to Betty, I need to say
eg Tom said that he loved her.
eg Tom said that he loved Mary.

Various other relative expressions may also require change, eg yesterday/today///tomorrow.

Clive

AlpheccaStars · Answer

CliveIf I am reporting this later to Mary

Of course if the reporting context changes, (time, location, etc.) the other parts of the sentence will change.
eg. It's Monday.
John said, "I will do the job tomorrow."
John said that he would do the job tomorrow.

Now it's Tuesday:
John said that he would do the job today.

But a pronoun will definitely change to reference the people in the main sentence, and indirect questions are a special case with lots of changes:

Tom said to Mary, "Will you marry me?"
Tom asked Mary if she would marry him.

Mary said to Tom, "Yes, I will."
Mary said that she would marry Tom.
The first person subject, I, must be changed to the proper third person pronoun. Otherwise you get an undesired meaning change: Mary said that I would marry Tom.

Anonymous · Answer

ram said to his ," sister class room to day ."

Indirect Narration

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