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  1. She will do it

    a) He said she will do it

    b) He said she would do it

As I presented we have to ways to report the original statement. Version A shows that we still believe that she will do something. Version B is different. Even if we think that a statement is still true we can back shift. So, B either means that we still believe she will do something or we don't and her action has probably already happened.

  1. Mark will do it when he arrives

    c) He said Mark will do it when he arrives

    d) He said Mark would do it when he arrived

Does it work the same way while reporting sentences with time clauses? I mean that C indicates it is still true, yet to happen and D have two meanings it is still true, yet to happen or it already happened. Is it the same?

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    I answered a recent question from you on the same subject. I gave you my opinion that backshifting is a bad way to think about the whole subject. The better process is, Choose the tenses and words that say what you want to say. All of your examples might be right or wrong depending on context, and depending on whether they create the intended message.
    – Peter Kirkpatrick
    Commented Aug 4 at 7:49
  • @PeterKirkpatrick Your previous answer hasn't answered this particular question. What do you mean by "All of your examples might be right or wrong depending on context, and depending on whether they create the intended message."? I provided a clear context. My question is if D can refer to the things that are still true or yet to happen like C or is it only about past events that aren't true anymore.? Please, answer this question.
    – user203412
    Commented Aug 4 at 9:53
  • Note that "Mark" is commonly a male name and rarely or never a female name. So "Mark will do it when she arrives" seems very strange. Who is "she"? Not "Mark" because Mark is male.
    – James K
    Commented Aug 4 at 10:20
  • @JamesK Que??? There is nothing wrong with "James says he'll do it when Mari-Lou arrives" and thus not with "James says he'll do it when she arrives" or "He says he'll do it when she arrives" or, as the OP writes, "Mark says he'll do it when she arrives". No?
    – Araucaria - Not here any more.
    Commented Aug 4 at 10:48
  • I didn't quite understand this sentence: "So, B either means that we still believe she will do something or we don't and her doing probably already happend."
    – TimR
    Commented Aug 4 at 11:07

2 Answers 2

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My answer to this question is to advise you to think completely differently. Don't think about backshifting. Don't take a sentence with one set of tenses and try to transfer it into a different set of tenses. Instead, think about the intended meaning of the sentence. What do you want to say, and what tenses will best communicate that meaning?

In other words, don't say to yourself, "This is sentence 1, how do I translate it into sentence 2?" Instead say, "How do I write sentence 2 from the start?"

And you do this by thinking about the context. Context here doesn't mean "things that are still true or yet to happen", which is what you put in one of your comments. Context means the whole story that you are telling. Context means, making it real. I'm willing to bet that you will never in your life write those sentences outside of this forum. But you will write emails to your boss and invitations for your daughter's sixteenth birthday party. You will write a blog about gardening; you will write a letter to the insurance company telling them the order of events that led to the car crash. That is context, and in each case the context will influence the tenses you use and the structure of your sentences. That is also why people who are trying to help you ask questions like "But who is Mark?" They ask, because it's part of the context and it makes a difference to the answer.

As a simple example, consider these variations:

(1) Mark said that he would make the sales presentation when she arrived. He did well, and she is now signed up.
(2) Mark said that he would make the sales presentation when she arrived. He's all ready to go, but she's not here yet and I'm getting worried.

Two stories with different contexts. The first sentence in each case is identical, and grammatically correct. But it's the second sentence in each case that answers your question about timing.

Maybe you could have a go at writing a three or four sentence narrative that includes one of your sample sentences but is more "true to life", then post it as a new question explaining the elements that you are still struggling with. I for one would be very happy to give you feedback.

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    This is excellent advice. +1. This is the same issue as with present perfect versus simple past. It depends on what a speaker wants to say. Whenever I explain that I get no response. Context means what you want to say.
    – Lambie
    Commented Aug 4 at 13:58
  • Thank you very much Peter. You are really kind
    – user203412
    Commented Aug 4 at 21:58
  • I strongly second this advice. Tense as a concept is context sensitive in almost every language, and while English is by far not the worst (as a trivial example of a language that is more context sensitive, compare Swedish, which often uses a syntactic present tense as a semantic future tense based solely on context), it’s still important enough that context is crucial for interpreting tense in all but the most simple sentences.
    – Austin Hemmelgarn
    Commented Aug 5 at 1:31
  • At the end of the day it's rules that matters for learners, not what "sounds right" because there is no way a learner can know that (apart from following the rules of course, and hoping it's not an idiom or an exception).
    – Andrew Savinykh
    Commented Aug 5 at 3:51
  • I'm not saying learners should just guess what "sounds right". By all means learn some rules and guidelines to help you out. But what I am strongly advising is that learners will make more sense of those rules if they try them out in real life situations, because that's all the rules are anyway: a summary of what we usually do.
    – Peter Kirkpatrick
    Commented Aug 5 at 6:18
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When telling a story, the "present" is the time when the speaker is telling the story and the "past" is the time when the story happened. The future is the future from the point of view of the story teller, but the "future in the past" is from the point of view of the characters in the story.

It is just he same when reporting speech. "Jack said Mark will do it" is something that is in the future of the speaker. The speaker doesn't know for sure what will happen in the future. "Jack said Mark would do it" is in the future of Jack, it is likely to be in the past of the speaker, and a common use for such an expression is in the situation in which Mark didn't do it.

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    Both #1 "Jack said Mark would do it when Susan arrives" and #2 "Jack said Mark would do it when Susan arrived" seem fine to me. Where #1 would normally (but not necessarily?) imply Susan hasn't yet arrived, but #2 has no such implication. And I think #3 "Jack says Mark will do it when Susan arrives" is valid (requiring that Susan hasn't yet arrived), but #4/5 "Jack says Mark would do it when Susan arrives/arrived" are probably never valid.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 4 at 10:44
  • @James K "I will do it" can be reported like this "He said she would do it". When we backshift we either think it is still true, yet to happen or that it already happened and it isn't true anymore. My question is if it works the same when I report more complicated sentences with time clauses like "I will do it when she arrives". Let me report this sentence by backshifting "He said he would do it when she arrived". Does it have two meanings like my previous example either still true on not anymore? That's my question. Nothing more.
    – user203412
    Commented Aug 4 at 11:17

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