Observations on the Temporal Organization of Spoken Narratives

Authors:

Pages: 363-378
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/ODNC9497

Abstract:

The topic of this article are the temporal features of spoken narratives representing past events. The main goal of the observations is to present some of the grammatical changes marking the ‘switch’ from direct to indirect speech. Preliminary observations on tense variation in oral texts (here between simple past and historical present tenses) are also included. Based on examples from everyday informal conversations, the analysis is intended to verify the hypothesis that the oral form of communication allows simplification of grammatical structures and reduction of grammatical markers of temporal orientation of utterances due to the enhanced role of discourse in reaching information that is not explicitly expressed by grammatical means.

Keywords:

spoken narratives, historical present tense, direct speech, reported speech, indirect speech

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