reported speech (He said he was at school yesterday.)

[Liza]

Hi,

I've just met this sentence in a coursebook.

'He said he was at school yesterday.'

What is its direct sentence? I think it is: ' I was at school yesterday.'
But if so, then why the above sentence is correct? Why it isn't:
'He said he had been at school yesterday'.

As far as I know there is a shift of tenses in the reported sentences. And I think the original sentence is not 'I am at school yesterday'. (It would be quite nonsense.)

thanks for your explanation.

[Alan]

Hi Liza,

You are right in referring to the 'shift' of tenses in reported speech but there is also the question of perspective involved. In your sentence the adverb 'yesterday' appears. We therefore assume the following: Today is Tuesday (let's assume) and so the non attendance at school mentioned is Monday and we therefore use the past simple again in the indirect sentence also. If however this non attendance was some time ago, we would have to refer to 'yesterday' as 'the day before' and then it is possible to report it as: He said he had been at school the day before.

Alan
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Too Many Words

[Jamie (K)]

Everything depends on what he said and when he said it.

If he said yesterday, "I'm at school," then in reported speech we would say, "He said he was at school yesterday."

If today he said, "Yesterday I was at school," you have a choice. You can say, "He said he was at school yesterday," in an isolated sentence or as part of a dialogue, or you could say, "He said he had been in school yesterday," as part of a longer narrative in the past.

We seldom use the past perfect in reported speech in isolated sentences that are not part of a narrative set in the past.

Also, there's a perfective and imperfective aspect involved. "He said he was at school yesterday," would be used if we want to say that at a certain time we're focusing on he was present in school, so it's used for the imperfective aspect. "He said he had been at school yesterday," would usually mean that he had been in school for a while and then left before something else happened: "He said he had been in school when we saw him." In other words, he went to school, then he left, and after that we saw him.