[Lingtyp] Language without direct speech or reported speech?

[Giorgia Troiani]

Hi Jocelyn,

I'd be also interested by any report or examples from corpus of direct
> speech
> that cannot be identified using morphological or syntactical clues.
>

If I understand this correctly, you would be interested in cases where
prosodic cues alone identify direct reported speech? If this is the case, I
have cases in a naturally occurring multiparty conversation in Italian
where speakers simply modify their voice to embody the person they are
reporting. Because they are embodying English speakers, sometimes they
code-switch for their quote. In this case, I think that the mere
code-switching tips the other participants on the fact that the material
being produced is in fact a quote.

For example, here one of the speakers is complaining about what she defined
"the type of men" she finds on dating apps in California:

L: Ma a loro,
>     *but they,*
>
>     a loro piace 'ste cose qui,
>     *they like this kind of things,*
>
> S: a loro piace,
>      *they like,*
>
>      <V Outdoor,
>
>      I like outdoor >,
>
> L:  I like outdoor,
>

>
     ma a me no?
>      *but I don't?*
>

S modifies her voice noticeably in producing the material in English; L
does not. I think in the first case, you could tell S is reporting an
hypothetical quote based on prosody, in the second case, I think switching
to English is enough for the rest of the interlocutors to understand that
this is not her own speech.

If these are the cases that interest you, I might have some more in
Italian, Western Lombard, and Kazakh.

Best,
-- 
Giorgia Troiani (she/they)

PhD Candidate, Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara
Graduate Research Assistant for the Multimodal Corpus of Spoken Kazakh
Language, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nazarbayev University
Visiting scholar, English Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Website <https://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/people/giorgia-troiani>
Zoom room <http://ucsb.zoom.us/my/giorgiatroiani>
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