REPORTED SPEECH : YES / NO QUESTIONS

REPORTED SPEECH YES / NO QUESTIONS

PART IV

C/ QUESTIONS

In reporting questions, whether “yes / no” or “wh” questions, the tense shifts should be applied to any question except for some sorts of questions with special meanings (requests, commands, suggestions etc.)

Questions in English normally have a different word order and some tenses involve the use of “helping verbs” as in the simple present tense (do / does) and in the simple past tense (did). And a question always ends with a question mark.

In reported questions, the normal word order of a question referred to as “subject verb inversion” is reset to the usual word order of a declarative / affirmative / positive sentence, which means that the “subject verb inversion” is bypassed. Additionally, the “helping verbs”, which are needed to ask questions and of course to make negative sentences, are omitted from the reported question.

a. YES / NO QUESTIONS

In reported “yes / no” questions, we must introduce either “if” or “whether” after the reporting verb.

The reporting verb in statements can be “said”, “told” or any other reporting verb as we will see later. But in reported questions, the reporting verb can be “asked”, “wanted to know” or “wondered”.

Let’s have a look at the first example in section 1(simple present) I used in the previous lesson and turn it into a question:

"I am happy."

Rachid asked, “Are you happy?”

The above question is reported as follows:

Rachid asked if I was / were happy. ( ……..whether I was happy.)

Or

Rachid asked me if I was / were happy. ( ……..whether I was happy.)

Or

Rachid wanted to know if I was / were happy. ( ……..whether I was happy.)

Or
Rachid wondered if I was / were happy. ( ……..whether I was happy.)

Look at sentence four from the same set of example 1:

Rachid asked, “Do you speak three languages?”

This question will be reported in the following way:

Rachid asked if I spoke three languages. (………whether I spoke three languages.)

Or

Rachid asked me if I spoke three languages. (………whether I spoke three languages.)

Or

Rachid wanted to know if I spoke three languages. (………whether I spoke three languages.)

Or

Rachid wondered if I spoke three languages. (………whether I spoke three languages.)

1.The tense shift / change is respected: “are” becomes “was / were”,
“speak” becomes “spoke”,

2.The “subject verb inversion” “are you…” is reset to normal “word order” “I was / were…”,

“do you speak” becomes “I spoke”,

3.The “helping verb” “do” is also omitted,

4.And finally the question mark “?” is omitted.

And these are the necessary changes needed in a reported speech transformation.

Look at section 5 (simple past), let’s take example four and change it into a question:

“The students wrote their compositions.”

The teacher asked, “Did the students write their compositions?”

This is a direct quote.

Let’s report this question / put this question into reported speech using the necessary / the appropriate tense shift:

The teacher asked if the students had written their compositions.

The direct question is in the simple past and the rule of reporting is applied, it changes into the past perfect

If you have a look at the last part of the reported question “…the students had written their compositions”, you would notice that it is a statement and not a question any more.

And the same rule applies to any question whatever the tense might be.