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Tense Variation in Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Deborah Schiffrin
Deborah Schiffrin*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract

The narrative is a naturally bound unit of discourse in which both formal and functional aspects of grammatical variation can be examined in a controlled and systematic way. This paper is a quantitative analysis of the past and the historical-present tenses as alternative ways of referring to past events in narrative. It shows how the organization of narrative delimits the area in which the historical present can occur, and how various structural and functional constraints restrict (or favor) switching between the two tenses. It also shows that the historical present evaluates narrative events because it is a use of the present tense, and that switching out of the historical present separates narrative events from each other.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by Linguistic Society of America

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