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.