We commend the target paper (henceforth S&N) for bringing reported speech to attention in the typological space, and for making a number of highly pertinent observations. We agree that reported speech deserves to be seen as a sui generis domain or topic, well deserving of typological attention and not reducible to an intersection of other phenomena. We would prefer to characterise it as a semantic or functional domain, rather than as a “syntactic” domain, given that key aspects of S&N’s definition hinge on semantic notions, but this is not our main concern in this commentary. Instead, we would like to take issue with the target paper on more important theoretical and methodological matters. The most significant concerns S&N’s reliance on complex, poorly-defined, English-bound terms, including both technical terms such as semiotic, ‘demonstratedness’, epistemic, modality, and representation, and ordinary, but equally Englishbound, words such as report(ed), message, discourse, and utterance. In this commentary we aim to demonstrate, so far as possible in the space available, that the use of such opaque and/or English-bound terminology is unnecessary and to outline an alternate approach to the same phenomena. The first step, in Section 1, is to show that the most explicit and unambiguous mode of reported speech (corresponding closely to the traditional idea of “direct speech”) can be described in simple, cross-translatable words. This, we argue, is a universal of human languages and provides a universal prototype or conceptual anchor for “reported speech” broadly. In Section 2, we outline a strategy for characterising the various modes of “non direct speech”, such as, inter alia, quotative particles, prosodic cueing, and subordinate constructions. Rather than trying to bring everything that may be counted as “reported speech” under a single, extremely abstract characterisation, we favour an approach that analyses these diverse constructions one at a time, so to speak, linking them all

中文翻译：

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报告的讲话是人类至关重要的现象：《斯普龙克》和《尼基蒂娜》评论

我们赞扬目标论文（此后称为S＆N），以使报告的语音在类型学领域引起注意，并做出许多高度相关的观察。我们同意，报告的语音应该被视为特殊的领域或主题，应该得到类型学的关注，并且不能归结为其他现象的交集。鉴于S＆N定义的关键方面取决于语义概念，我们更愿意将其表征为语义或功能领域，而不是“语法”领域。但这不是我们在此评论中的主要关注点。相反，我们想对目标文件提出更重要的理论和方法论问题。最重要的问题是S＆N依赖于复杂的，定义不明确的，英语约束的术语，包括诸如符号学，“展示性”，认识论，情态和表征，以及普通但同等英语水平的词，例如报告，信息，话语和话语。在这篇评论中，我们旨在尽可能在可用的空间中证明，使用这种不透明和/或受英语约束的术语是不必要的，并概述了解决相同现象的另一种方法。第一部分中的第一步是显示可以用简单的，可交叉翻译的单词来描述最清晰和明确的报告语音模式（与传统的“直接语音”概念相对应）。我们认为，这是人类语言的普遍性，并且广泛地为“报告的言语”提供了普遍的原型或概念锚。在第2节中，我们概述了表征“非直接语音”的各种模式的策略，例如，尤其是定语词，韵律提示和从属结构。与其尝试将可能被视为“报告语音”的所有内容都用一个非常抽象的特征来表达，不如说是一种可以一次分析这些不同结构的方法，可以这么说，将它们联系在一起