grammar - reporting past simple tense



Choose: He said that while he was watching television, the light (went/had gone) out.


Some people say that past simple tense doesn't change in indirect speech, but my teacher says that the direct sentence was: "While I was watching the television, the light went out" but when we report it we don't change the past progressive but only the past simple. Who's right?



Answer



No, they're not right. But in your example, "He said that while he was watching television, the light (went/had gone) out.", the choice compatible with the sequence-of-tenses rule is "went", not "had gone". The light going out is contemporaneous with the watching of TV, so they are reported using the same tense: "was watching" and "went out". You'd only get a past perfect if you needed to express a past time previous to a past time.


If he says: "I was watching TV.", meaning his watching TV preceded the time at which he spoke, then later you report the past event of his speaking, you could report: "He said that he had been watching TV", since there is a past within a past. However, if his words were "I am watching TV", the report would be: "He said he was watching TV." In the last case, the saying and the watching happened contemporaneously, so the same past tense is used.


Going back to your example, if the words he spoke were "While I was watching television, the light went out" and later you report what he said, since there are two past times involved, the past time when he spoke and a previous past time when he was watching TV, your report could say: "He said that while he had been watching television, the light had gone out." But you generally don't need to shift to the past perfect in this way.


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