The Classification of Words

§ 525. There is no agreement as to the syntactical nature of a sentence like He said, "I love you".
Some linguists regard it as a simple sentence in which the "quotation part" functions as a secondary part of the sentence *. Others ² interpret it as a complex sentence in which the quota­tion serves as an object clause. Some authors treat it as a com­pound sentence ³.
We fully agree with those ⁴ who think that direct speech is a peculiar syntactical unit which should not be equated with any of the above mentioned types of sentences.
• § 526. Let us compare the two sentences:
He said, "I love you". He said he loved her.
Each of them contains two predications, so they are com­posite sentences, but the relation between the predications is different.
The predications of the second sentence have, as it were, one common centre. For both of them the first person is the author who uttered or wrote the sentence. The moment he did it is the moment of speech in regard to which the two ac­tions (of "saying" and "loving") are in the past.
The predications of the first sentence have separate centres: different first persons and different moments of speech. The introductory part of this sentence (He said, "...") serves to indicate the shifting of the centre of predication. The pronoun he points out who will be regarded as the first person in the quotation, and the verb said shows that the moment of speech is shifted to the past.
Thus direct speech can be defined as a syntactical unit containing two centres of predication. We use the term unit,
¹ H. Fowler. On Grammatical Inversion in Dialogue Machinery. Oxford, 1919.
²E. В. Васильева. Бессоюзное подчинение в литературном языке 17 ст., дисс., Л., 1955.
³Винокурова. Грамматика английского языка. М., 1954.
⁴ В. И. К о д у х о в. Способы передачи чужого высказывания «Уч. зап ЛГПИИЯ», т. 104, Л., 1955; Р. Г. М у х а. К вопросу о прямой речи. «Уч. зап. ХПИИЯ», т. V, 1959.
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not sentence, because the quotation, may contain several sen­tences.
He said, "If it had been warmer, we could have slept out here. You'd think we might have had that much luck, to-night of all nights. But it's cold and it's going to rain." (Greene).
§ 527. The introductory part of direct speech may precede the quotation, follow it, or be inserted in it.
"I've come home, Mum," he said. (Maugham).
"/ just called", Amos said, "to see my son". (Moore).
§ 528. The so-called 'indirect speech' does not differ gram­matically from the conventional types of sentences.
E. g. He said that he loved Mary (a complex sentence with an object clause).
What he said was that he had no intention to stay (a com­plex sentence with a predicative clause). He told me to stay (a simple sentence).
The only difference between He said he loved her and He knew he loved her is the lexical meaning of the verbs said and knew. Sentences of indirect speech usually contain the so-called 'verba dicendi'.
§ 529. The "rules for changing from direct into indirect speech" found in most English grammars are rules for reducing two predicative centres to one — that of the author.
The first and the second person of the quotation in He said, "I love you" are third persons in relation to the author, hence the change of / to he and you to her.
The moment of speech of the first person of the quotation is in the past with regard to the moment of speech of the author, hence the change of love to loved in He said he loved her.