Content tagged with "tense"

No tense changes

There are no tense changes in indirect speech if:

Time is a concept which is related to our perception of reality. There are three times: past, present and future. Tense is a grammatical category which is marked by verb inflection and expresses when an event or action happens in the flow of time.

Strictly speaking, only two English tenses are marked by the inflection of the verb:

Unreal tenses after wish / if only, would rather / would sooner, it's (high) time and as if / as though do not change in indirect speech: