Recensione volume 'Oratio obliqua. Strategies of reported speech in ancient languages, ed. Paolo Poccetti, Pisa-Roma, Serra, 2017'

Abstract

The phenomenon of reported speech in the world languages has gained attention in current linguistic research, as testified by the increasing number of recent works in this field, from typological linguistics ( Jäger 2007 ; Goddard & Wierzbicka 2018) to neurolinguistics (Groenewold 2015 and references therein). Although the wide cross-linguistic diversity in the way speakers report other people’s speech, there is a consensus on the need for identification strategies that are typologically valid. To this purpose, reported speech has also been investigated from many theoretical perspectives, from Functional Grammar to Natural Semantic Metalanguage, from Generative Grammar to Pragmatics, from Philosophy of Language to Sociolinguistics. In my opinion, this challenge might also benefit from a diachronic perspective, which takes into account data from ancient languages. The volume under review, Oratio obliqua. Strategies of reported speech in ancient languages, edited by Paolo Poccetti, developed from a workshop which was held at the 17th Conference of Latin Linguistics (Rome, 2013, 20th-25th May).