Free Indirect Discourse and Quotations are introduced by a special kind of parentheticals, minimally constituted by a subject and a predicate of saying, thinking etc. I propose that these parentheticals are represented in a syntactic structure integrated with that of the reported sentence. The phrases hosting the parentheticals are projected by prosody oriented heads, i.e., heads which do not
... [Show full abstract] express a lexical content, but are read at the syntax-phonology interface as special instructions for realizing the peculiar intonation associated to parentheticals,, the so-called comma intonation. I show that this approach offers several advantages, contributing in solving some long standing problems connected with the syntactic status of parentheticals in general.