In the ASK Graded Reader ゴン狐, the following sentence appears:
魚売りは、おれを泥棒だと言って、。。。
I have seen that using を。。。と言う is like saying 'to call somebody something.' My issue is that there is a だ at the end of the clause. I would expect it to be either おれが。。。だと or おれを。。。と, but the two together confuses me.
How does this make sense? Would it not be correct to say おれが泥棒だと言った?
This 言う is a member of this verb group, so だ before と is optional. (This reminds me of the "optional being" in English, as in "to regard me as being a thief" vs "to regard me as a thief".)
I would say this type of と is not quotative-to because the part marked with と is a simple noun (phrase) rather than a sentence.
俺が泥棒だと言って would tend to be taken as "saying 'I am the thief'" (i.e., the 魚売り is calling himself a thief).
The speaker is saying 'The fishmonger, calling me a thief..". (It seems the line is adapted, but the speaker seems 兵十. Cf. the original.）
と in 泥棒だと言って is clearly 引用の「と」, and requires a 終止形 ending for the preceding verb (or words that conjugate).
[Edit] Maybe naruto is right - this is not a 引用, but still it requiring a 終止形 should be the same. I found a seemingly relevant article.
Compare:
All the bold words are in 終止形.
===
A simpler (no) explanation is that the acceptable particles are determined by the verb. If this sounds fair enough, just remember it as pattern:
Concretely:
In short, だ in the question exists because いう (tends to) requires it.
===
FYI: ごん狐 is possibly one of the few non-fairy-tale stories that close to everybody knows in Japan (as long as s/he learned from standard textbooks in primary school).
魚売りは、おれが泥棒だと言って sounds like the fishmonger is calling themself the thief, which seems a bit unlikely, but as per the comments below, it could be understood as intended too.
In 魚売りは、おれを泥棒だと言って, the quoted part is just 泥棒だ. If you want to say, The fishmonger called me a thief and capture "me" within the quote, then the sentence should have been おまえが泥棒だと言って
Keep in mind that Japanese does not have indirect speech like we do in English. Japanese only has direct speech, the fishmonger said, "you're a thief"
