Question

Rewrite the sentence in indirect speech-
‘Have you anything to tell me, little bird?’ asked Ulysses.
a- Ulysses asked the little bird whether it had anything to tell him.
b- Ulysses asked the little bird whether had it anything to tell him.
c- Ulysses asked the little bird whether had it anything to tell it.
d- Ulysses asked the little bird whether it have anything to tell him.

Answer 1

Hint:There are two types of reported speech- Direct and Indirect speech. Direct speech expresses the original words spoken by the speaker, whereas Indirect speech expresses the words spoken by a speaker in the past.

Complete answer:
 As given in the hint, we put direct speech in quotation marks to state the exact words or quotes of a speaker.
Let’s look at the rules that we need to follow while changing a sentence from direct to indirect speech-
We remove the quotation marks in indirect speech.
The tense of the verb usually changes in the past tense.
The pronouns also change depending upon their use in the sentence.
In the given question- We know that Ulysses asked the little bird whether it had anything to tell him. Here, we have used the reporting verb ‘whether’ to remove the use of the question mark.
Now, let’s examine the given options-
Option a- ‘Ulysses asked the little bird whether it had anything to tell him’ is the correct option, because we have changed the sentence into the past tense form.
Option b- ‘Ulysses asked the little bird whether had it anything to tell him’ is an incorrect option, because the use of ‘had it’ is grammatically wrong.
Option c- ‘Ulysses asked the little bird whether had it anything to tell it’ is an incorrect option, because the pronoun for Ulysses should be ‘him’ and not ‘it’.
Option d- ‘Ulysses asked the little bird whether it have anything to tell him’ is an incorrect option, because we need to change the sentence into past tense form.
So, the correct answer is “Option a”.

Note:
 Keep in mind, we use ‘it’ as a pronoun for animals and birds. Also, we use ‘whether, if’ as reporting verbs if the sentence states a question.