Can you please explain this conversation pattern to me? For example:
Question: Don’t say you’re not hungry, I know you.
Answer: I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry. I’m starving.
My questions to this:
What does in the answer mean that “Simple Past” tense? I mean, by sentence “I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry” speaker obviously meant…“I didn’t say I’m not hungry”…So, what’s the difference between “I didn’t say I’m not hungry” <=> “I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry”???
English doesn’t allow to have two negations in one sentence. But I think this is that case. I didn’t say…“1 negation” …“I’m not hungry”…2 negation…I’m obviously missing something here, can you please bring me up to speed about it?
Second example of this pattern:
Question: Are you nervous?
Answer: I didn’t say I wasn’t sedated.
My question, does “I didn’t say I wasn’t sedated” mean here “I didn’t say I’m calm”??? Because this again seems like two negations in one sentence…
The use of the simple past tense (wasn’t) is normal here. If the tense used in the direct speech was the simple present tense, then the tense usually shifts to the simple past tense in the reported speech sentence. However, if the situation is still current in the reported speech sentence, then people sometimes do not shift the tense. That means that both of your sentences would be OK.
This shift in the tenses in reported speech also happens when people report what they did not say.
You can have more than one negation in a grammatically correct sentence. However, two negations in a single clause would frequently be considered grammatically incorrect. The sentence “I didn’t say (that) I wasn’t hungry” consists of two clauses. You can look at it as two separate sentences:
I didn’t say (that).
I wasn’t hungry.
The following sentence would normally be labeled as [color=red]grammatically incorrect if the intended meaning is basically I did not say any words:
[color=red]* I didn’t say nothing. *
Note that there is only one clause in the sentence above.
The formally correct version of that sentence is “I didn’t say anything.”
That’s an odd pair of sentences. They really need more context to understand the why someone’s response to the question “Are you nervous” might be “I didn’t say I wasn’t sedated”. Your Question and Answer an unlikely pairing. For an answer such as the one you posted, I would expect the question to be different – something more like this instead:
“Why aren’t you sedated?” OR “Why didn’t you take your sedative?”
In other words, I would expect the person asking the question to make the assumption that the other person was not sedated.
However, grammatically speaking, the second sentence in your mini-conversation is fine. The speaker means “I am sedated.”
In direct speech, someone could say this:
“I am sedated.”
Later, I could report what I said this way:
I said I was sedated.
[color=white].
To report what I did not say (in this case, to correct someone else’s mistaken assumption), then you can look at the situation this way:
Your friend mistakenly thinks your direct speech was this:
“I am not sedated.”
You can then correct the mistake by reporting that you did not say that:
I didn’t say (that) I wasn’t sedated.
[color=darkblue]________________________________
[size=75]“The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.” ~ Shana Alexander[/size]
By the way, the new title of your thread contains a misspelling.
Expla[color=red]ination: I didn’t say I wasn’t hungry. I’m starving.
It should be explanation.
[color=darkblue]__________________________
[size=75]“The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.” ~ Red Auerbach[/size]
I know. But I didn’t change the title name. Torsten probably did.
But it doesn’t matter, thanks a lot for this phorum. I like the answers from the local mods, because they doesn’t contain comments like: “Hey, the answer is obvious”…and so on…I noticed that even if there is possible to find a lot of internet resources on the particular question posted by local users, you’re answering with your own words. You do not post link in your answers…Keep it that way, guys.
You’re right.