Tense of the conditionals of the reported speech

Question

I found the following sentence on a website. The thing that I cannot understand is that why they've used first conditionals to talk about something happened in the past. This is mainly attributed to the fact I heard that that often we should make the main sentence that has been mentioned by someone more past when it comes to the reported speech.

'We'll miss the bus if we don't hurry', he pointed out.

If I had written that sentence, I would have used the following structure.

'We would have missed the bus if we had not been hurried', he pointed out.

Having considered the above points, I would really appreciate it if someone could let me know that is the reason for them to use such a construction instead of third conditional statement while describing something that has been expressed by someone in the past.

Blue Jay · Accepted Answer

dileepa'We'll miss the bus if we don't hurry', he pointed out.

It's correct as written. It's quoting the actual words he said at that time, advising an action needed at that time (hurrying) to avoid a problem that could occur at a later time than that (missing the bus).

dileepa'We would have missed the bus if we had not been hurried', he pointed out.

No, that wouldn't work at all, because that wouldn't be reporting what he said at the time. It's describing a completely different statement he could have made after they caught the bus. Also, there's a difference between "if we had not hurried" and "if we had not been hurried". "If we had not hurried" would fit better here.

You can backshift like this:

He said "It is 2km to the bus stop. We have to hurry".

He said it was 2km to the bus stop and we had to hurry.

Note that the first quotes his actual words, while the second reports them.

Clive · Answer

I didn't mean to write so much about this. It kind of got out hand and a bit complicated. I hope it all make sense. If anything is not clear, please ask.

Clive

"We'll miss the bus if we don't hurry", Tom said at 1pm.

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Let's assume that the person reporting this later was part of Tom's group, called Bob.

Later, eg at 6pm, Bob can tell people what Tom said at 1pm, as follows.

At 1pm Tom said "We'll miss the bus if we don't hurry". This is direct speech.

At 1pm Tom said we would miss the bus if we didn't hurry. This is indirect (reported) speech.

Note that none of this tells us if they actually did or didn't hurry, or if they actually missed the bus.

Now let's consider your suggestion.

"We would have missed the bus if we had not ~~been~~ hurried", he (Bob) pointed out. No-one actually said these words at 1pm. Bob can say them at 6pm. In addition, you have changed the second part of the sentence to passive for no reason.

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You can also assume that the person reporting (called Jim) was not part of Tom's group

Later, eg at 6pm, Jim can tell people what Tom said at 1pm, as follows.

At 1pm Tom said "We'll miss the bus if we don't hurry". This is direct speech.

At 1pm Tom said they would miss the bus if they didn't hurry. This is indirect (reported) speech.

Again, note that none of the above tells us if they actually did or didn't hurry, or if they actually missed the bus.

Now let's consider your suggestion again.

"We would have missed the bus if we had not ~~been~~ hurried", he (Jim) pointed out. No-one actually said these words at 1pm, and Jim can't say them at 6pm, because he was not part of the group.

Clive

Tense of the conditionals of the reported speech

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