Wednesday 31 March 2021

Quoted vs Reported Offers

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 115):
Quoted offers naturally retain the property of being variously realised in the mood system:
declarative: She said: "I can do the laundry."
interrogative: She said: "Shall I do the laundry?"
imperative: She said: "Let me do the laundry!"
However, reported offers can always be realised in the same way as reported commands — as in the case of reported propositions, the distinction in orientation between giving and demanding is realised by the projecting clause; for example:
command: she told him —> to do the laundry
offer: she offered (promised; threatened) —> to do the laundry
The category of reported projected proposal is thus realised generally as a perfective non-finite clause when it is reported.