backshift

English

Etymology

From back +‎ shift.

Pronunciation

  • (UK, US) IPA(key): /ˈbækʃɪft/
  • Audio (Southern England):(file)

Noun

Examples

The sentence:

Fred says "I play football".

becomes the sentence:

Fred said that he played football.

backshift (countable and uncountable, plural backshifts)

  1. (grammar) The changing of the tense of a verb from present to past in reported speech.
  2. (statistics) A function on a stochastic process whose value on any random variable is the preceding random variable in the process.

Verb

backshift (third-person singular simple present backshifts, present participle backshifting, simple past and past participle backshifted)

  1. (grammar, transitive) To change the tense of a verb from present to past in reported speech.
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