On Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Jim Henry<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> How do your conlangs handle this sort of thing in narrative fiction?
> Does it have morphological or syntactic ways to distinguish
> exactly-quoted reported speech from paraphrased reported speech?

When exactly-quoting a small amount of direct speech, the quote is
introduced with _sshak_:

    Adáshavni ne sshak jhurla.
    I reply, "Hello."

When quoting a longer amount of speech, _ssha_ is used before the
quote and _ká'sshak_ after the quote (like saying "end quote"):

    Adáshavni ne ssha jhurla, jhorní Arthei ká'sshak.
     I reply, "Hello, my name is Arthaey."

When using the verb _sshav_ "to say", the quote-introducer _ssha(k)_
is optional:

    Sshavni ne vën'lev?
    I say, "How are you?"

When paraphrasing speech, the verbs in the reported speech must have
the _-on_ required of embedded verbs and _do-_ on embedded _ne_:

    Sshavpeith ne movon done delót.
    She* said she went to the store.

In contrast, exactly-quoted speech does not do this:

    Sshavpeith ne ssha movpeni ne delót.
    She said, "I went to the store."

I haven't decided how I want the punctuation to work. Existing
Asha'ille texts don't mark it at all, as you can see. But I probably
do want something to mark it...

Perhaps it could be *written* without the _ssha(k)_, but readers know
you're supposed to "pronounce" the quotation marks as such:

    Adáshavni ne "Jhurla."
    /ɑˈdɑʃavni nɛ ʃə̆ˈʃɑk ˈʒuɹlɑ/

It would then be up to the reader to choose whether to pronounce the
ending quotation mark as _ká'sshak_, or to omit it.


--
AA

http://www.arthaey.com/conlang/


* Not really "she"; _-eith_ means "friend/acquaintance" and does not
encode gender. But I really hate writing "s/he" in English, so I just
arbitrarily picked one for the translation.