Cover Image

Events, States and Times. An essay on narrative discourse in English

This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb 'now' and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinct...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Altshuler, Daniel (auth)
Format: Electronic Book Chapter
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2016
Subjects:
narrative progression
abduction
discourse coherence
rhetorical relations
states
attitude reports
indexicality
indirect speech
times
anaphora
Events
aspect
sequence of tense
tense
adverbs
deixis
Online Access:DOAB: download the publication
DOAB: description of the publication
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb 'now' and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinction between events, states and times and proposes that 'now' seeks a prominent state that holds throughout the time described by the tense. Building on prior research, prominence is shown to be influenced by principles of discourse coherence and two coherence principles, NARRATION and RESULT, are given a formally explicit characterization. The key innovation is a new method for testing the definitional adequacy of NARRATION and RESULT, namely by an abductive argument. This contribution opens a new way of thinking about how eventive and stative descriptions contribute to the perceived narrative progression in a discourse.
Physical Description:1 electronic resource (x, 176 p.)
ISBN:9783110485912
9783110486452
DOI:10.1515/9783110485912
Access:Open Access

Similar Items