Moustafa Abdel Hameed Mohamed Atia El Ashry A PRAGMA-SYNTACTIC STUDY OF REPORTED SPEECH IN ENGLISH AND CAIRENE COLLOQUIAL ARABIC Department of English, Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University Summary The present study of the syntactic and pragmatic analysis of reported speech in English and Cairene Colloquial Arabic seeks to present a different view of the linguistic phenomenon of reported speech. It reviews the traditional accounts of reported speech and tries to provide an adequate syntactic- pragmatic account highlighting the multifunctional characteristics of reported speech in the two languages. In order to fulfill this purpose, the thesis is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one is an introductory chapter, as such it is confined to preliminaries that include the definition of reported speech and its types. It also explores the features of different standard varieties of quotation in order to distinguish reported speech (as a variety of quotation) from other varieties. Since all types of quotation are explicitly indicated, it follows that not all quotation is reported speech, but all reported speech is quotation. A quotation must be put forward as a representation of some previous utterance or thought if it is to count as reported speech. In this Chapter, the study tries to show that reported speech may be used to draw attention to either the form or the content of the original. Its presence may be overtly marked or left to be inferred. It has also looked at some forms of direct and indirect speech that can also be used for other purposes than reporting. 1 It has also argued that reported speech needs not be verbatim reproductions of the original. Chapter two provides a critical review of the previous literature. This chapter surveys some traditional accounts of reported speech, including philosophical analysis of reported speech in traditional grammar, semantics and literary analysis. It has argued that they cannot be used as a general framework for an account of reported speech: in the first place because they do not allow for loose attributions, and in the second place, because they are not backed by an adequate pragmatic theory. In addition, this chapter surveys some recent accounts of reported speech. It showed that, whatever their intrinsic merits, none of these approaches offers an adequate account of how the hearer resolves the many indeterminacies left open when a communicator uses a report, and that a full account of how reported speech is understood must make extensive appeal to pragmatics. Chapter three provides a general syntactic– pragmatic framework to analyze reported speech in English and Cairene Colloquial Arabic. The study depends on an eclectic theoritical framework picks out all relevant features represented in Halliday and Matthiessen’s “An Introduction to Functional Grammar” (2004) and Sperber and Wilson’s “Relevance Theory” (1986/1995). In this chapter, The study has outlined both Functional Grammar and Relevance Theory, it showed how they can provide supplementary notions that can help in the analysis of reported speech. With reference to Functional Grammar, the study analyses reported speech using the system of projection which Halliday and Matthiessen defines as the logico-semantic relation that exists between two 2 clauses, one containing a verb of saying or thinking and the other expresses what was said or thought. In addition, it clarifies how the Relevance-theoretic comprehension strategy can be used to resolve semantic indeterminacies and arrive at the intended interpretation. The study has also introduced the Relevance-theoretic notion of metarepresentation, it showed how it applies to analyse a variety of cases of reported speech. Chapter four illustrates the different syntactic structures of reported speech in English adopting the framework of Halliday and Matthiessen’s “An Introduction to Functional Grammar” (2004). The analysis in this chapter showed that quoting and reporting are two distinct modes of projection representing two degrees of remove from the original source. The difference between them derives from the general semantic distinction between parataxis and hypotaxis, as it applies in the particular context of projection. Direct Speech is analysed as a clause entertaining a dependency relationship with the reporting clause, more particularly one of parataxis, in which both clauses can potentially occur on their own. Indirect speech, on the other hand, is analysed in terms of hypotaxis because the reported clause in it is dependent on the reporting clause. Reviewing Halliday and Matthiessen’s view of projection, the study represents other forms of reported speech that lose a projecting clause. These are forms of ‘free direct speech’ and some forms of free indirect speech. The study found that these forms have no tactic relationships whether equal (paratactic) or unequal (hypotactic). In Chapter five, the study provides a pragmatic analysis of reported speech in English. The analysis clarifies that all types of reported speech are used to metarepresent an attributed utterance or thought on the basis of shared 3 properties. They differ in what these shared properties are. Direct and free direct speech are metalinguistic: they metarepresent an utterance or thought in virtue of shared formal properties (The second representation is a description to the first). Indirect speech is interpretive: it metarepresents an utterance or thought in virtue of shared content (the second representation is an interpretation of the first). Free indirect speech is both metalinguistic and interpretive: it metarepresents its original in both content and form (the second representation is used descriptively and interpretatively to represent the first). Chapter six provides a syntactic and pragmatic analysis of reported speech in Cairene Colloquial Arabic. On one hand, the study claims that there is no specific syntactic distinction between quoting and reporting in Cairene Colloquial Arabic. Concerning the grammatical constraints on forms of speech reporting in Arabic, the study reaches the conclusion that there is no regular shift of tense or mood involved in the change from direct into indirect speech and if this happens it will be out of contextual matters not of structural matters. On the other hand, this chapter has shown that reported speech in Cairene Colloquial Arabic can be fitted into the relevance-theoretic account using the notion of metarepresentation. As appeared from the analysis, reported speech varies both in the degree of explicitness and in the type of original that it is used to represent: whether utterances or thoughts. In Cairene Colloquial Arabic, as well as in English, there are direct speech forms which vary considerably from the original. Some subjects even collapse original utterances from a number of frames to produce a suitable reporting structure. Sometimes, the re-use of original speech 4 content presents a different point of view. All This shows that original speech is manipulated in various ways to suit subjects’ own reporting strategies. The study concludes with Chapter seven by shedding light on points of similarities and differences appeared from the analysis of the different forms and uses of reported speech in English and Cairene Colloquial Arabic. The general conclusion which this thesis ends in is that, reported speech forms should not only be tackled as syntactic types. In addition, they should be studied as tendencies emerging from the compositional effects of the speech verb, pronoun, lexis, and tense selection in a conversational or narrative context. 5