Factors licensing embedded present tense in speech reports

Abstract

According to Ogihara (1995), the usage of the embedded present in a speech report
such as John said that Mary is in the room is restricted by the cause of John’s belief (the state
that made John think that Mary is in the room): the present tense can be used only if this
cause still holds at the time that John said that Mary is in the room is uttered. This paper
presents experimental evidence demonstrating that this is only one of the factors that licenses
a felicitous usage of the embedded present tense. In particular, we show that the cause of
belief still holding is not a necessary condition, and identify two additional, sufficient (but not
necessary) factors: in cases of false belief, who is aware of the falsity of the belief and duration
of the reported state. While these factors are independent, they collectively support the idea
that the present tense encodes ‘current relevance’, even in embedded contexts (e.g. Costa 1972;
McGilvray 1974). This gives rise to the question of how we can derive ‘current relevance’ and,
in particular, whether previous analyses of the embedded present tense are adequately equipped
to do so.
Keywords: tense, speech reports, double access, experiments.