David Lim wrote:I think I don't understand your terminology. Besides reported speech or thoughts or feelings, what other kinds of indirect discourse are there? Do you agree that the infinitive in an indirect discourse conveys relative time within the scope of the discourse? What do you mean by "indirect commands and indirect questions"?
Indirect discourse is the reporting of speech in a dependent (or infinitival) clause. The speech reported could be a statement, command, question, etc.
As a result, it was confusing to me when you said
I considered "εν αυτω μενειν" to be an indirect statement rather than an indirect discourse.
That's like saying that you considered someone's pet to be a cat rather than a mammal.
When pressed to explain, you then said:
I remember someone in another recent thread told me that they were different, when I checked I did think an indirect discourse is specifically for reporting events, where the tense of the infinitive corresponds to time relative to the event, whereas an indirect statement does not have the same temporal connotations.
This raised my curiosity as to what you checked so I could understand better what you're driving at, and all I got was a link to Funk that did not mention anything about "specifically for reporting events."
I am concerned that my previous attempts to explain have only confused matters more, and, rather than get side-tracked, I'd really like to get back to the source of your distinction between indirect statements and indirect discourse. So I renew my question:
What grammar are you using?
Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia