Question

Choose the indirect speech of the given sentence.
The mother said to the baby, “Don’t touch the fire.”
A. The mother warned the baby not to touch the fire.
B. The mother ordered the baby to not touch the fire.
C. The mother told the baby that it should not touch the fire.
D. All the above.

Answer 1

Hint: The given sentence is in direct speech. Direct speech is a sentence in which the exact words spoken by the speaker are reconstructed in quotation marks. In case of indirect speech the content of the statement is expressed without quoting it and not necessarily in the same words, without changing its meaning . To convert direct to indirect speech when the direct speech is in the form of a request or order, we use the suitable reporting verb in the indirect or reported speech.
Example: She said, “I won’t be able to make it”. (Direct Speech).
She said that she won’t be able to make it. (Indirect Speech).

Complete step by step answer:
To know the correct answer, let us analyse each option in detail.
The mother warned the baby not to touch the fire- This sentence is the indirect speech of the given statement as we know the meaning of indirect speech is used to report something in their own words. In case of a warning, the pattern for converting direct speech to reported speech is verb + indirect object + to-clause. The indirect object is the person spoken to. Verbs like warn, ask, advice and forbid etc are used to report orders and requests in this way. Hence, option A is the correct answer.
Mother ordered the baby to not touch the fire- This sentence is not accurately changing the speech to indirect speech as the form is not correct. Hence this is not correct.
The mother told the baby that it should not touch the fire. - This sentence is grammatically incorrect. Hence it’s not the correct option
All the above- As we know that option A is the correct option. Hence this option is invalid.

So, the correct answer is “Option A”.

Note:
When we want to report an order or request, we can use a verb like 'tell' with a to-clause. Example: He told me, “Go away”! (Direct Speech).
He told me to go away. (Indirect Speech).
The pattern is verb + indirect object + to-clause.