Children’s stories

In the previous chapter we related uses of verbal -le and the particle le to ‘peaks’ in information flow, and ‘peaks’ as changes in the structure of the common ground, respectively. We observed that common-ground-related ‘peaks’ (‘deviations’, ‘solutions’) function at the project level, whereas verbal -le marked ‘peaks’ (‘realisations’) in event flow to guide the reader through the story line, from one ‘accomplishment’ to the next. In this chapter we take a closer look at ten relatively short children’s stories to see if the hypotheses formulated hold. We claim that the hypotheses are in essence confirmed by the data of the children’s stories. The chapter will first provide more details about the stories we used (6.1), and thereafter take a special look at the ‘art of storytelling’ in an endeavour to understand the nature of ‘imagining’, a story’s notional structure, and aspects of ‘writing style’ (6.2). Our analysis of the various uses of the particle le in relation to that notional structure is presented in section 6.3. The various occurrences of verbal -le are discussed in the next section, where we also endeavour a comparison with the various uses of the particle le (6.4). A conclusion of this part of the analysis is presented in the closing section (6.5).