linguoboy wrote:What I don't understanding is questioning either the existence of English grammar or the possibility of seriously studying it (whichever it was you were doing). Linguists devote their entire lives to puzzling out the intricacies of English, which are as many and as complex as are found in any other language.
I don’t deny that :) What I meant to say is that I’ve been able to get by by occasionally studying pieces of grammar of other languages and never really English grammar by itself. That’s indeed one of the coolest things about English.
My question essentially comes from the fact that in some languages, including my native one, even if the main clause refers to the past, the subordinate one will always be in a present or future tense. “I told myself I wouldn’t miss you” will literally be “I told myself I won’t miss you” in Bulgarian and there’s no direct speech intended here, we just use plain future no matter that the action happens in the past. At the same time, this would sound absolutely incorrect in French, unless you add the quote marks, as you suggested.
But that’s a different way of thinking about it. So when you, as an American, hear one of these sentences, you think that the speaker is saying it in direct speech? I would not use direct speech that often, and when I do, I’ll highlight it in a way that would make it obvious. Like in the phrases you suggested:
I told myself "don't" and
"I told myself, 'Fuck that'"But these phrases are different, because:
linguoboy wrote:there simply is no indirect counterpart.
Namely.
You should also note that in the three phrases you’ve found in Google, there are no quote marks! So, do you think they’re using a simple future or present tense in the subordinate clause because they intend direct speech or because of bad grammar, or one that become very loose over time?
linguoboy wrote: Woods wrote:
Are you sure you’re taking my question seriously tonight – I know you know so many things about languages and I’ve never doubted your expertise but there’s something in your reply here I’m not quite sure about :)
I'm not sure why you would think I'm not. But believe whatever you want, I'm not interested in trying to convince you otherwise.
I just wanted to make sure :) Because this thing with the quote marks sounded a little bit like a joke.