Form-Function Relations in the Development of Narrative

The four chapters in this part of the book integrate themes which have been introduced from different points of view in the three preceding sections. They combine concern for developing skills in narrative construction (Part II) and for crosslinguistic comparisons in the development of linguistic forms (Part III) with a focus on the interaction between form and function that is a central theme of the book as a whole (Part I). This theme is analyzed for four domains: (1) temporality, (2) backgrounding, (3) perspective taking, and (4) episodic plot structure.