Publication details
Límites del discurso directo en la lengua latina
| Title in English | Limits of direct discourse in the Latin language |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This chapter examines the limits of the definition of typical direct speech in Classical Latin. It shows that direct discourse interweaves with similar structures of contiguous areas (pure quotations, verbs of speech in the first person with discursive and/or pragmatic function), and some instances are ambiguous. The important feature of direct discourse turns out to be the presence of two communicative situations and the intention to report the content of a message. It is suggested that direct discourse should be conceived as a category with a core consisting of typical cases, surrounded by less typical or atypical cases, which then move on to “contiguous structures”. The second part of the article is concerned with the “literality” of quotations and different manners of insertion of “literal” quotations into discourse. It shows that besides direct discourse, Latin used mixed quotations, i.e. quotations adapted to the syntactic structure of the sentence. Various strategies for introducing mixed quotations into discourse are discussed, and it is indicated that these are related to the degree of the speaker’s “appropriation” of quotes. |