Reported Speech - Discurso Indireto em inglês

Qual seria a correta forma de fazer o reported speech com essa frase?

Who was your favorite artist as a child?
  1. He asked her who had been her favorite artist as a child.
  2. He asked her who her favorite artist had been as a child.
Eu acredito que seja a opção 2, embora eu já tenha visto outras vezes situações nas quais não se faz a inversão para sujeito+verbo, e se mantém verbo+sujeito, como no exemplo 1 que eu dei acima.

Se realmente essa situações existem, alguém pode me explicar quando devo fazer isso?

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11 respostas
Ordenar por: Data
Marco, a ordem sujeito-verbo deve ser seguida no discurso indireto, pois não estamos fazendo uma pergunta, mas simplesmente reportando. Além disso, nesse caso específico, devemos usar was e não had been, pois estamos falando de uma situação que durou por um bom tempo, e não de um evento que ocorreu num passado “mais passado”:

He asked her who her favorite artist was as a child.

Usando o had been, fica a impressão de que ela tinha um artista favorito durante um período anterior ao tempo passado mencionado, quando ele talvez não era mais o predileto dela. Já o was passa a ideia de duração – uma verdade que durou durante a infância da moça em questão.
Henry Cunha 3 18 190
Marco, eu não vejo muita diferença entre as duas construções. Ambas servem. A meu ver, nesse caso, o mais simples é manter o máximo da ordem original. Mas à critério de simplicidade e não de correto/errado.

Eu teria de pensar mais para ver se existem casos em que usamos somente a inversão. Não sei.

Eu não concordo com Back-day na questão do verbo. Eu utilizaria o past perfect nesse caso.
Pelos livros de gramática que já estudei, a ordem é sujeito-verbo, pois a noun clause é uma afirmação aqui. Se fosse ao contrário, o who seria o sujeito? Penso que talvez sim, estruturalmente e não semanticamente.

Quanto ao verbo, a distância entre o que foi dito no passado e o que é reportado pode decidir qual tempo usar. Se eu estivesse reportando essa pergunta a pouco tempo depois dela feita, eu usaria was.

Veja uma dúvida semelhante: forum.wordreference
Henry Cunha 3 18 190
Back-day, we're not that far apart. I was writing the following as you responded:

On your second point:
A quick second-thought on the verb tense. Yes, you can use either 'was' or 'had been.' It doesn't seem to matter much which one you use in this case. The time duration (of the actual 'favored' situation) is indeterminate in either case, isn't it? Yeah, possibly you'd switch tenses depending on the elapsed time.

On your first:
Yes, 'who' is the subject of the clause 'who was...', so there is no inversion when you write

He asked her who was (had been) her favorite artist as a child.

Or you can put the verb toward the end. Seems about the same to me in this case.
I agree with you, Henry! But I’m not used to the verb-subject order, at least in formal writing.

I hope we’ve helped Marco eheh
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Henry Cunha 3 18 190
Back-day, we worked pretty hard on this one! Let's hope it did some good.

I'm still thinking whether there are cases in which only the inversion (verb-subject) really works:

Who did you see at the mall?

Inverted order: Her mom asked her who had she seen at the mall.
Normal order: Her mom asked her who she had seen at the mall.

Normal: Her mom is asking her who she saw at the mall.
Inverted: (not possible)

1.(I'm not bothering with "whom". This is a usage exercise, not a grammar one.)
2.(Re verb tenses: these samples perhaps give us a clue about the use of simple past and past perfect -- which matches your speculation about the degree of temporal distance from the original event? But that's just normal embedding in any case, isn't it?)
Henry, are these examples with the verb-subject inversion formal/literary cases? I have always seen the subj-verb order in reported speech. The past perfect inversion in affirmative sentences can be used in formal writing: Had I known that (= if I had known that) I would never have come. (Oxford)

Sometimes, the pronoun is necessarily the subject, because it has been the subject in a question:

Who called Maggie? - She asked who called/had called Maggie.
Where are my glasses. - He asked where his glasses are/were.

Here’s an interesting topic on reported sentences with which and where: forum.wordreference

Tricky subject, indeed!
Henry Cunha 3 18 190
Back-day, your examples show that in some cases the indirect statement merely repeats the format of the question, without modifying the sequence, right? In effect, does that not happen because the question itself follows a direct order in some cases (when 'which' is the subject) and an indirect order (when 'where' is a predicate adverb) in other cases? (This ties in to the thread you mentioned.)

Where is the telephone?
He asked where the telephone is.

Which is the telephone?
He asked which is the telephone.
(Not possible: He asked which the telephone is.)

Where is mine? --> He asked where his is.
Which (one) is mine? --> He asked which (one) is his. / Not: He asked which (one) his is.

Where is it? -->
Which is it? -->

Do we need to rethink the issue of the question format to find our answer?
Henry Cunha 3 18 190
Back to that thread you mentioned: forum.wordreference

The question was, Why do we say "I don't know which (one) is Devon." and not 'I don't know which (one) Devon is."

Well, substitute the word "right" for "Devon" and see the result:

I don't know which (one) is right.

And the question format would be "Which one is Devon/right?"

There is no inversion in either the direct question or the indirect statement. In both cases the subject-verb order is kept.
He asked where it was
He asked which was it

Right, but I have to say that I still don't quite understand WHY sometimes we don't do the inversion
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In the examples in that thread, which is clearly the subject. For this reason, the indirect statement structure reproduces the direct one. That’s fine, no mystery.

In Marco’s original question, Who was your favorite artist as a child?, your favorite artist is the subject. So, the indirect sentence should have the verb after the subject.

But in English we can invert this order sometimes. The inversion, according to them, tends to give a literary effect.
In another thread, natives emphasize the regular subj-verb order in affirmatives: forum.wordreference

BUT… in Henry’s version, He asked her who was (had been) her favorite artist as a child, her favorite artist can be regarded as the complement of the subject (who), if we follow Loob’s explanation in that early thread: forum.wordreference

As a matter of fact, there’s no practical difference in meaning, only structurally. The question is: which sounds better? :?