ABSTRACT
Direct vs Indirect reported speech In English there is a clear structural difference between these two forms of reporting. Indirect speech is introduced by a subordinating conjunction such as 'that'or 'whether' ('He said that...' 'He asked whether .. .') The pronouns are changed, 1st. person to 3rd., 2nd. to 1st.; the tense of the verb is moved back; adverbs -of time and place are shifted, and in some cases the lexical verb is changed; not to speak of other changes when imperatives or negatives are introduced; e.g. Direct reported speech: 'He said, "I want you to come here now" ': Indirect: 'He said that he wanted me to go there then'. In Swahili there are almost no such changes, and it may be that the distinction is not really valid. Reported speech can be introduced by kama, kwamba, (or both), kuwa, or ali/efi. A valuable distinction, hard to make in English, is conveyed by the use of ati, which suggests that the reporter is distancing himself from the material reported. The effect is something like that conveyed in English by the use of 'alleged' for 'said', but 'alleged' in English is rather formal and conveys overtones of disbelief, besides its being used in police reports and so on. Shift of person is quite rare in Swahili, though there is sometimes shift of 1st. person singular to 3rd. singular.
