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Laborious Posted 13 years ago
Grammar
right choice (reported speech)
Hi again teachers,
This morning I had an argument with a friend of mine on choosing the right tense in reported speech. I have these following two sentence which were uttered by our teacher during a lesson in our class.
1). Teacher: The Earth moves round the Sun.
2). Teacher: We cannot live without water.
When I reported these sentences to one of my friends, I said to him:
1). Today the science teacher told us that the Earth moves round the Sun and 2). that we cannot live without water.
After this, he started to discuss reported speech with me and he said, "Do you know we can back-shift the tenses of the original speech or we can leave them as they are when we have to report sentences like these?", but I argued with him and said, "No! We can't and we don't change the tense from present to past when the reported clause contains a universal truth or a permanent truth as in my examples."
In my friend's opinion, we could say either 'moved' or 'moves' for #1 and either 'cannot' or 'could not' for #2 while reporting.
Now please, you help me teachers by telling if I am right or wrong.
Thank you teachers.
This morning I had an argument with a friend of mine on choosing the right tense in reported speech. I have these following two sentence which were uttered by our teacher during a lesson in our class.
1). Teacher: The Earth moves round the Sun.
2). Teacher: We cannot live without water.
When I reported these sentences to one of my friends, I said to him:
1). Today the science teacher told us that the Earth moves round the Sun and 2). that we cannot live without water.
After this, he started to discuss reported speech with me and he said, "Do you know we can back-shift the tenses of the original speech or we can leave them as they are when we have to report sentences like these?", but I argued with him and said, "No! We can't and we don't change the tense from present to past when the reported clause contains a universal truth or a permanent truth as in my examples."
In my friend's opinion, we could say either 'moved' or 'moves' for #1 and either 'cannot' or 'could not' for #2 while reporting.
Now please, you help me teachers by telling if I am right or wrong.
Thank you teachers.
Top answer
You can do it either way. but Presen tense is better.
- You can do it either way.
- but Presen tense is better.
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2 Answers
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When the reporting verb is in a past tense, then backshifting is (almost) never wrong.
I included the '(almost)', because, if I hadn't, somebody would have come up with an example to prove me wrong. So, I covered myself.
I included the '(almost)', because, if I hadn't, somebody would have come up with an example to prove me wrong. So, I covered myself.
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