A combination of properties of direct, indirect, and free indirect discourse: A case study of the Russian particle mol

The paper demonstrates that the Russian particle mol exhibits a combination of properties associated with direct, indirect, and free indirect discourse (FID). First, mol-clauses license shiftable linguistic items (adverbial indexicals, expressive speech acts, imperatives, evaluative lexical items) not only in FID, as typically assumed for such linguistic items, but also in indirect discourse. Second, first- and second-person pronouns in mol-clauses are shiftable in both indirect discourse and FID, even though it is usually assumed that indirect discourse and FID only allow for third-person pronouns, which are interpreted in FID from the narrator’s perspective. This type of shift is characteristic of the colloquial variety of Russian. The observed pattern suggests that mol can be analyzed as an instance of mixed quotation, albeit with some modifications reflecting the empirical facts discussed above. Third, the author of a mol-clause does not have to produce the clause since the speaker might infer its content based on the author’s facial expressions, gesture, or behavior. Fourth, the co-occurrence of the reportative govorjat and the particle mol provides further evidence that the particle mol is not a marker of indirect evidentiality and that the linear order of these items reveals their semantic scope. Fifth, the particle mol can be omitted in indirect discourse not only in contemporary Russian but also in the Russian variety of the 19th century. Overall, the paper makes several contributions to ongoing discussions of discourse types and quotation varieties in the literature.