ABSTRACT
In Chapter IA we proposed that experience is filtered through language for purposes of speaking and that event descriptions are packaged into larger units for purposes of narrating. The preceding chapters have offered many examples of these processes and their development. On the level of narrative structure, narrators come to organize their stories in terms of problem, goal-oriented behavior, and solution, with increasing attention to motivation and evaluation. On the level of text structure, narrators come to segment the text into episodes, using a variety of means to mark episode boundaries. On the level of morphosyntax, narrators come to use devices such as relative clauses and temporal connectives to mark the status of information — old or new, situating or motivating, foreground or background — and the temporal and causal relations between events.
