Universal #1421

Legacy number: 1421

 Number  1417
 Original  If there are separate forms for narrative and non-narrative past contexts, the non-narrative forms tend to be more highly marked than the narrative ones.
 Standardized  IF there are separate forms for narrative and non-narrative past contexts, the non-narrative forms tend to be more highly marked than the narrative ones.
 Keywords  tense, past, context, narrative, markedness
 Domain  inflection
 Type  no genuine implication; rather: provided that
 Status  achronic
 Quality  statistical
 Basis  sample of 75 languages in Dahl 1984
 Source  Dahl 1980: 22, Dahl 1984: 117

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Discussion
Notes
Dahl defines a narrative discourse as one where the speaker relates a series of real or fictive events in the order they took place. According to Dahl, a sentence occurs in a narrative context if the temporal point of reference (in Reichenbach’s sense) is determined by the point in time at which the last event related in the preceding context took place.
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
Dahl defines a narrative discourse as one where the speaker relates a series of real or fictive events in the order they took place.
According to Dahl, a sentence occurs in a narrative context if the temporal point of reference (in Reichenbach's sense) is determined by the point in time at which the last event related in the preceding context took place.