Universal #1422

Legacy number: 1422

 Number  1418
 Original  It is almost always possible to use the least marked indicative verb from in a narrative context.
 Standardized  It is almost always possible to use the least marked indicative verb from in a narrative context.
 Keywords  tense, mood, indicative, context, narrative, markedness
 Domain  inflection
 Type  unconditional
 Status  achronic
 Quality  statistical
 Basis  sample of 75 languages in Dahl 1984
 Source  Dahl 1980: 22, Dahl 1984: 117

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Discussion
Counterexamples
Russian (Slavic, Indo-European) and Chinese (Sino-Tibetan), which are languages with a marked category of perfectivity.
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.