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Universal 1418:

Posted in Universals Archive

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

One Comment

  1. FP
    FP

    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.

    1. May 2020

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