Direct or quoted speech is a sentence (or several sentences) that reports speech or thought in its original form, as phrased by the first speaker. It is usually enclosed in quotation marks. The cited speaker is either mentioned in the inquit (Latin "he says") or implied.

In grammar, indirect or reported speech (also indirect discourse; Latin ōratiō oblīqua) is a way of reporting a statement or question. A reported question is called an indirect question. Unlike direct speech, indirect speech does not phrase the statement or question the way the original speaker did; instead, certain grammatical categories are changed. In addition, indirect speech is not enclosed in quotation marks.

Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech. (It is also referred to as free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or discours indirect libre in French.) What distinguishes free indirect speech from normal indirect speech is the lack of an introductory expression such as "He said" or "he thought". It is as if the subordinate clause carrying the content of the indirect speech is taken out of the main clause which contains it, becoming the main clause itself. Using free indirect speech may convey the character's words more directly than in normal indirect, as devices such as interjections and exclamation marks can be used that cannot be normally used within a subordinate clause.

Quotatives or direct reported speech is usually signalled by being enclosed in quotation marks as demonstrated in (2) (Quirk et al. 1985)

(2)But you can't say "This is thefirst time I 've heard this " <ICE-GB:W1B-007 #100:3>

Reporting clause may occur before, within, or after the direct speech. That is, quotatives can be placed in varying position(initial, medial, final) relative to quotation, as show in (3 )

(3)a. Initial: But you can't say "This is thefirst time I've heard this "

<ICE-GB:W1B-007 #100:3>

b. Medial: "Goodness", she said, "I completely forgot."

<ICE-GB:W2F-013 #156:1>

c. Final: "Turn right," said Stephen,on his knees, one hand grasping

theseat in front. <ICE-GB:W2F-015 #028:1>

All these examples in (3) have potential for inversion such likes (3c): Quoting verb said precedes the Speaker Stephen. The sentence likes (3c) is called 'quotation inversion(QI)'

(4)a. John said, 'The newspaper is late again.'

b. 'The newspaper is late again,' John said.

c. 'The newspaper is late again,' said John.

At least three different patterns are available as illustrated in (4): (4a) is a canonical word order sentence while (4b,c) is the quotatives. In (4b,c), the quotatives in (4b) is non-inverted while (4c) is inverted: In inverted quotatives, the quoting verbs precedes the Speaker.

English Quotation inversion constructions are not only hard for non-native speakers to learn but also difficult to teach because of their intriguing grammatical and discourse properties, some of which we have just described. This paper aims to chart the grammatical(distributional, syntatic, semantic, pragmatic) properties of the QI construction.