ABSTRACT

Even if temporal sequencing is accepted as a hallmark of narrative in the vast majority of cases, there is an ongoing theoretical debate about how to explain the phenomenon in linguistic terms. A minimal narrative for William Labov thus consists of at least two such clauses, which are separated by what he terms 'temporal juncture'. Taken together, the issues surrounding temporal sequencing allied to the PC's wide range of functions make its interpretation in oral narration potentially particularly complex. Temporal interpretation is related to the discourse mode in question: in Narrative discourse mode, perfective events normally lead to an interpretation of temporal sequence. One of the key issues in current research is whether or not the fundamental semantic value of the imperfect changes when it is used in a narrative context. Note that the length of the stories is extremely variable across the corpus; more conversational narrations are thus required than neo-contes in order to generate an appropriate number of switches.