I am grateful for the chance to respond to this interesting and valuable study. The ubiquity of reported speech constructions in human languages is a remarkable fact about them, bearing out Bakhtin’s (1984: 143) dictum that that we “live in a world of others’ words”. But despite its ubiquity and functional distinctiveness, as Spronck and Nikitina (S&N) show us, the category of reported speech (RS) is harder to pin down than we might think. First of all there are problems with the term itself, given that what RS “reports” may include thought as well as speech, and even when it is (re)presented as speech, may not ever have actually been spoken. Notwithstanding those problems with the term “reported speech”, in practice it seems that the range of phenomena to which it has applied do match up closely with those referred to by alternative terms such as “reported discourse”, “represented speech”, and “constructed dialogue”. Given that, and the fact that “reported speech” is the most commonly used term for it nowadays, S&N’s decision to stick with it seems sensible. A more serious problem (which is of course perennial in linguistic typology) is that it is difficult to draw a boundary around the range of phenomena to be included under the term. Everyone can agree on such central cases as (1) John said: “Look, there is marmalade here!”, but what about cases like (32) “He believes that there is no tooth fairy”, (33) “He sees that she is entering the room” and (34) “I am telling you that he is in for a surprise”. For those cases I take S&N’s position to be that there are no purely formal criteria for whether or not the sentences as such are to be counted as instances of RS. Rather, particular situated uses of them can be determined to be RS or otherwise, according to the three semantic criteria stipulated in their definition: “demonstratedness”, evidentiality and an evaluative epistemic relation between the represented utterance and its speaker. A paradoxical result of that way of determining the matter

中文翻译：

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对Spronck和Nikitina的回应“报道的语音构成了专门的句法领域”

我很高兴有机会对这项有趣而有价值的研究做出回应。据报道，人类语言的语音构造无处不在，这与巴赫金（1984：143）的格言一致，即我们“生活在别人的话语世界中”。但是，正如Spronck和Nikitina（S＆N）向我们展示的那样，尽管无处不在和功能独特，但报告语音（RS）的类别比我们想象的要难确定。首先，该术语本身存在问题，因为RS的“报告”可能既包括思想也包括语音，即使将其（重新）表达为语音，也可能从未真正说过。尽管“报告的语音”一词存在问题，在实践中，似乎它所应用的现象的范围与“报告的话语”，“代表的讲话”和“建构的对话”等替代术语所指称的现象确实很匹配。考虑到这一点，并且“报告的语音”是当今最常用的术语，S＆N坚持使用它的决定似乎是明智的。一个更严重的问题（在语言学类型上当然是常年出现的）是很难围绕该术语所包括的现象范围划界。每个人都可以就这样的中心案例达成共识，例如（1）约翰说：“看，这里有果酱！”但是诸如（32）“他相信没有牙仙子”，（33）“他看到她正在进入房间”和（34）“我是在告诉你他要来一个惊喜”。对于这些情况，我采取S＆N的立场是，对于将此类句子是否算作RS的实例，没有纯粹的正式标准。而是，可以根据其定义中规定的三个语义标准将它们的特定位置用途确定为RS或其他方式：“表现力”，证据和所表达话语与其说话者之间的评估认知关系。这种确定问题方式的自相矛盾的结果 言语与其说话者之间的证据性和评价性的认知关系。这种确定问题方式的自相矛盾的结果 言语与其说话者之间的证据性和评价性的认知关系。这种确定问题方式的自相矛盾的结果