The complement clauses discussed in the preceding sections all have the form of finite embedded clauses, that is, they are introduced by a complementizer ( dat'that' or of'whether') or a wh-phrase, and have the finite verb in clause-final position. Complement clauses of this kind are also found in sentences such as (123a), in which the speaker reports what someone else has said, thought, etc. The sentences in (123b&c) show, however, that there are also alternative ways.

Although the examples in (123) show that constructions like these are not strictly limited to speech proper but may also pertain to thoughts, they are normally said to involve reported speech. We will therefore refer to the whole set of constructions as reported speech constructions, and to the parts in italics, which express the reported parts, as quotes. Although quotes are often analyzed as direct object clauses (see, e.g., Haeseryn et al. 1997), we will see that this is not entirely correct for all cases: see also Corver (1994), Corver & Thiersch (2003), and De Vries (2006). For this reason we will refer to the clauses headed by the verb of saying/thinking not as matrix clauses but, more neutrally, as say-clauses.
      The way of reporting speech in (123a) is normally referred to as indirect reported speech. An important property of this construction is that the embedded clause(s) does/do not necessarily correspond in a one-to-one fashion to the actual utterance(s) of the source indicated: for example, if Jan is a very talkative person, the embedded clause may simply summarize a story that took 30 minutes to tell, that is, example (123a) does not imply that Jan literally said: "Ik ben ziek". This distinguishes indirect from direct reported speech; example (123b) is only true if Jan pronounced the sentence Ik ben ziek, for which reason we repeated this sentence literally in the translation of (123b). Another difference, which is illustrated in (124), is that direct quotes can consist of a sequence of independent sentences, whereas in indirect reported speech constructions each assertion must be realized as a separate dependent clause.

In example (123c), we are dealing with semi-direct reported speech (also known as erlebte rede), which constitutes a kind of in-between category. It differs from indirect reported speech in that the quote has the form of a main clause. This is clear from the position of the finite verb: if we are dealing with indirect reported speech, the finite verb should occupy the clause-final position, whereas it should be in second position in semi-direct reported speech. The placement of the finite verb is clearly related to the distribution of the complementizer: the examples in (125) show that the complementizer is obligatory in indirect reported speech constructions with declarative quotes, but that it cannot appear in semi-direct reported speech constructions. This also shows that semi-direct reported speech constructions such as (125b) cannot be derived from direct reported speech constructions such as (125a) by deletion of the complementizer dat, but that they constitute a construction type in their own right.

Although semi-direct reported speech does not involve a literal quote, it differs from indirect reported speech in that the relation with what was actually said is much tighter. Example (123c), for instance, suggests that Jan said something like Ik ben ziek. Semi-direct quotes differ from direct quotes mainly in that first and second person pronouns are replaced by third person pronouns and that the present tense of the reported sentence is adapted to conform to the past tense of the verb zeggen'to say'; cf. Lodewick (1975:169-70). The semi-direct equivalent of the direct reported speech construction in (126a) would then be as in (126b).

      Semi-direct reported speech is not often used in colloquial speech but is regularly found as a stylistic device in modern literature, especially for expressing the internal thoughts of the protagonist(s) of a story (the so-called interior monologue); Lodewick in fact claims that it is a characteristic feature of impressionistic writings from around 1900. The use of semi-direct reported speech constructions implies that, like direct quotes, semi-direct quotes may involve sequences of sentences; this expectation is borne out, as is illustrated in (127b) by means of the semi-direct counterpart of the direct reported speech construction in (124b), repeated here as (127b).

      Embedded clauses in indirect reported speech constructions such as (123a) can be pronominalized (Jan zei het'Jan said it'), which suggests that they function as direct object clauses. It is often assumed without much argumentation that direct and semi-direct reported speech constructions like (123b&c) also involve direct object clauses; see Haeseryn et al. (1997:1100). This is, however, far from obvious: the quotes in the two examples in (127) consist of series of sentences, and this makes it is very unlikely that quotes have the function of direct object. In fact, it may even be the case that we are dealing with a relation of an entirely different sort given that the part Jan zei need only be used in examples like (123b&c) when the context leaves open what the source of the quote is; if the source is known, it can readily be omitted. This is illustrated in the little scene in (128), which might be used as the start of a story. See also the discussion of what Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 1029) call free indirect/direct speech.

Matrix clauses in indirect reported speech constructions, on the other hand, can only be left unexpressed under very special circumstances. Sentence (129b), for example, cannot replace the continuations of the story in (128a&b), but is only acceptable as an answer to a question such as (129a)—we are dealing with some kind of ellipsis; the part of the answer that can be recovered from the original question (here: the matrix clause) is simply omitted.

We will see in Subsection II that this difference is reflected in several other ways, and that there are reasons for assuming that in many cases direct and semi-direct reported speech constructions are not regular transitive constructions. Instead, the quotes function as full-fledged sentences with parenthetical say-clauses.
      We already mentioned that semi-direct reported speech is normally used in written language and cannot be found in colloquial speech so frequently, subsection III will show, however, that there is also a reported speech construction that is normally avoided in writing but which is highly frequent in speech; cf. Verkuyl (1977) and Romein (1999). This construction, which is illustrated in (130), involves the quotative preposition van followed by an intonation break, which may optionally be preceded by a hesitation marker like eh'er', and a quote. The quote can be either direct or, less frequently, indirect; cf. Verkuyl (1977).

The three types of reported speech constructions introduced above will be discussed in separate subsections, subsection I discusses indirect reported speech and shows that the indirect quote functions as a regular argument clause, subsection II continues with a discussion of (semi-)direct reported speech and argues that the say-clause in such constructions is often (but not always) parenthetical, subsection III concludes with a discussion of the colloquial quotative van-construction in (130).