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Quasi-direct discourse: style or grammar?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Gunter H. Schaarschmidt
Gunter H. Schaarschmidt*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Extract

In 1924 Otto Jespersen pointed out the difficulty of finding an adequate term for a type of indirect speech which is not dependent on an immediately preceding verb like ‘he said’ or ‘he thought.’ He suggested that previous terms such as ‘erlebte Rede’ be replaced by the term ‘represented speech,’ because the writer “does not experience or ‘live’ these thoughts or speeches, but represents them to us….” Since then the terminology problem has by no means become smaller. Jespersen’s term is almost forgotten today, having been replaced by completely new terms, or by terms previously in use, among them ‘erlebte Rede.’ Some of the more common terms presently in use are: ‘style indirect libre,’ ‘monologue intérieur indirect,’ ‘indirect interior monologue,’ ‘narrated speech,’ ‘nesobstvenno-prjamaja reč’, and ‘quasi-direct discourse.’ The last two are direct translations of the German term ‘uneigentliche direkte Rede.’ One of them, viz. quasi-direct discourse, will be used in the present paper only tentatively, since it will be shown later that there is actually no need for having a special term in the grammar of Russian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Fall 1966 , pp. 24 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1966

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References

1 Jespersen, Otto, The Philosophy of Grammar (London, 1951), 290 Google Scholar.

2 See Matejka, L., Reported Speech in Contemporary Written Russian (>Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard, 1960), 128–38 Google Scholar, where a fairly extensive survey of the literature on the subject may be found.

3 Doležel, “Neitralizacija protivopostavlenij v jazykovo-stilističeskoj strukture epičeskoj prozy,” Problemy sovremennoj filologii (Moskva: Nauka, 1965), 116-23.

4 Mowatt, D. G. and Dembowski, P. F., “Literary study and linguistics,” CJL11 (1965), 48 Google Scholar.

5 Grammatika russkogo jazyka (Moskva: AN SSSR, 1960), II, Part 2,428-32.

6 Matejka, Reported Speech, 129.

7 Ibid.

8 See Garvin, Paul, “The Definitional Model of Language,” in Natural Language and the Computer (New York, San Francisco, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 18 Google Scholar.

9 (1) “Anocka was in Brest (literally: is in Brest). She had told him herself, she herself had pronounced the word Brest. Why had he not thought of this at once? It did not matter (lit.: it does not matter). Nothing mattered (lit.: matters). She was (lit.: is) there, where the fire was (lit.: is) raging. On the border! Perhaps he had not heard correctly? Why had he not asked her to repeat it? Had she really said this? Was he not mistaken? Her last words had been: “very, very, very much!” But why her last words? What did (lit.: does) it mean—her last words? What was (lit.: is) this?”

(2) “The Arts Committee ought to know. They are responsible. They must know where a People’s Artist has gone. I must telegraph at once. But, damn it, there is no one there, it is Sunday! First thing in the morning Nadja ought to…. Nadja’s address in Moscow? Oh yes, she was going to send it. Today she would be going straight to the country. In the train everything should be known by now. Nadja will hear the news and return. Why should she return? Don’t know. The future is always unknown. But today I know it. Anočka has never been in such danger. I must think things over more calmly. Panic means trouble. I must not give way to that, no….” K. Fedin, Koster (Moskva: Goslitizdat, 1962), 198-9.

The translation of the second passage contains far more formal markers in the form of first person personal pronoun forms than does the Russian original. This is due to the untranslatability by similar constructions of Russian impersonal sentences which do not require a formal subject or noun phrase, but in which the subject is understood contextually.

10 Dujardin, E., Le monologue intérieur (Paris, 1931), 39 Google Scholar.

11 Humphrey, R., Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1955 Google Scholar.