In a Manner of Speaking: How Reported Speech May Have Shaped Grammar

We present a first, broad-scale typology of extended reported speech, examples lexicalised or grammaticalised speech constructions without regular quotation meaning. These typically include meanings that are conceptually close to such as think want , but also interpretations do not appear have an obvious conceptual relation with talking, cause begin . Reported may therefore reflect both concepts communication and inner worlds, reminiscent ‘core grammar’, evidentiality, modality, aspect (relational) tense clause linking. contextualise our findings in the literature on fictive interaction perspective suggest lend insight into fundamental grammar: evolution verbal categories. Based striking similarity between grammatical categories, we hypothesise phenomenon represents plausible linguistic context which grammar evolved.