[Lingtyp] Language without direct speech or reported speech?

[Françoise Rose]

Dear Jocelyn,
In the two languages I am working on (Teko and Mojeño Trinitario), there is no indirect speech construction.
If the introductory speech verb is omitted (which is not frequent I would say), then there is no obligatory marking of the insertion of direct speech. But prosody in the oral mode and the overall understanding of the context in written mode don't usually lead to any ambiguity. Also items like second position clitics help parsing sentences.
Best,
Françoise
Rose, Françoise. 2011. Grammaire de l’émérillon teko, une langue tupi-guarani de Guyane française. Langues et Sociétés d’Amérique traditionnelle 10. Louvain: Peeters. P. 351-352

-----Message d'origine-----
De : Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> De la part de Jocelyn Aznar
Envoyé : jeudi 16 juin 2022 09:29
À : lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Objet : [Lingtyp] Language without direct speech or reported speech?

Hi everyone,

Working on reporting speech at the moment, and more precisly on direct speech, I was wondering whether it has been once reported that a speech community wouldn't practice reported speech or direct speech. I'd be also interested by any report or examples from corpus of direct speech that cannot be identified using morphological or syntactical clues.

I know of course that indirect speech, or other forms of reported speech else than direct speech, are not so common, but has it been reported that a particular speech community wouldn't practice at all reported speech ? or have you read about a speech community which didn't produce direct speech?

Having sent the email with the wrong address first, Daniel Ross had the opportunity to tell me about the word of Daniel Everett on Pirahã. I will take a look at Everett's decriptions and the documentary Grammar of Happiness where there should be an interested occurrence of direct speech.

Best,
Jocelyn Aznar,
postdoc at ZAS,
Berlin

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