Back to: Direct and Indirect Speech (Narration)
In narration change different types of sentences – assertive, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory, optative have their own set of rules of conversion. Among them assertive sentence is the most common and easiest.
Today we are going to learn what is assertive sentence? How to identify this type of sentence and the rules of converting them.
What is assertive sentence?
Assertive sentence makes or declares a statement, gives information about something. Assertive sentence simply gives basic statement. Assertive sentence is also called declarative sentence.
You can identify and change assertive sentence by noticing particular features in the sentence. They are discussed below
- Assertive sentences make general statement.
- Assertive sentences always end with full stop.
- ‘Say’,’ ‘tell’, are usually used as reporting verb in assertive sentence. And they generally remains unchanged in indirect speech. Say to changes to tell.
- Words like ‘not’, ‘never’ is used in case of negative assertive sentence.
- Assertive sentence follows the basic sentence structure of subject + verb + object….
- After omitting inverted comma, the reporting clause and reported clause is always connected with ‘that’ in simple assertive sentence.
Examples of Narration Change in Assertive Sentences
| Direct Speech | Indirect Speech |
|---|---|
| Rabi said, “I am not feeling well today.” | Rabi said that he was not feeling well that day. |
| Madhu said to Mita, “we are going to be late.” | Madhu told Mita that they are going to be late. |
| They said, “We are participating in the competition.” | They said that they were participating in the competition. |
| Raja said to Dipu, “I had money in my wallet.” | Raja told Dipu that he had money in his wallet. |
| He said, “I will go to police station.” | He said that he would go to police station. |
