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    Reported speech in Afrikaans
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    Afrikaans makes use of both direct and indirect speech to report the direct words of a speaker. When indirect speech is selected Afrikaans largely makes use of complement clauses, finite and inifinitive. Direct speech is illustrated by example (1), and indirect speech by example (2).

    1
    a. Hy sê: "Ons vermoed dat 'n kombinasie van die drie faktore bydra tot die afwaartse trajek."
    He says, "We suspect that a combination of three factors contributes to the downward trajectory."
    b. "Ons vermoed dat 'n kombinasie van die drie faktore bydra tot die afwaartse trajek," sê hy.
    "We suspect that a combination of three factors contributes to the downward trajectory," he says.
    2
    a. Hy sê die vermoede is dat 'n kombinasie van die drie faktore bydra tot die afwaartse trajek.
    He says the suspicion is that a combination of three factors contributes to the downward trajectory.
    D. Boonzaaier: Rapport, 2020/04/12
    b. Die vermoede is dat 'n kombinasie van die drie faktore bydra tot die afwaartse trajek, sê hy.
    The suspicion is that a combination of three factors contributes to the downward trajectory, he says.

    A useful distinction can be drawn between the reporting clause, which corresponds to the matrix clause of complement clause constructions, and the reported clause, which corresponds to the complement clause itself. Afrikaans allows variation in the order of reporting and reported clause, as illustrated by the differences between the (a) and (b) examples of direct and indirect speech above.

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    The construction forms, syntactic distribution and lexical and semantic associations are set out in the following sections.

    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Bertus van Rooy, Haidee Kotze
      Category: Afrikaans Syntax
      Keywords: reported speech
      Version: 1.0, May 2020
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Bertus van Rooy, Haidee Kotze May 2020
      This is a beta version.
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