Reported Speech in English and Maithili

Abstract

The research work entitled "The Reported Speech in Maithili and English", which is a comparative study is an endeavor to identify the process of transforming the direct speech into the reported speech in the Maithili language, to compare and contrast the process of transforming the direct speech into the reported speech in the Maithili language with that in English. There were 50 native speakers of the Maithili language as respondents for collecting the authentic data. They were selected from two campuses of Rajbiraj. The campuses were selected non-randomly by using judgmental sampling procedure and the native speakers who were the students of Bachelor's degree were selected systematically by using simple random sampling procedure. The researcher used questionnaire as a tool to collect the data. For English data, he consulted secondary sources such as previous theses, books etc. related to the topic. Similarly, for Maithili, data along with the collected data from the native speakers, as being a native speaker of Maithili language, the researcher used his intuition as well. The findings of the study show that the same subordinative conjunctions, je, se and balu, are used to delete the inverted commas from all types of sentences except from the imperative sentences because no any conjunction is used to perform this task in them, while transforming the direct speech into the reported speech in the Maithili language. Likewise, if there is a first person pronoun in the direct speech in the imperative sentences, then those pronouns are not changed in the Maithili language as that are changed in English. The research work is divided into six chapters. The first chapter deals with the introduction to the research topic, general background, the Maithili language and its speakers and boundaries and the English language and its significance in Nepal. In the same way, this chapter also throws light on grammar and its importance, reported speech, literature review, objectives and significance of the study. The second chapter includes the process of transforming the direct speech into reported speech in the Maithili language. The third chapter deals with the process of transforming direct speech into reported speech in the English language. Then, in the fourth chapter, the similarities and differences between the reported speech in Maithili and English language have been pointed out. Similarly, the fifth chapter includes the implication of reported speech in Maithili and English. And the sixth and final chapter is the conclusion.