| This study is concerned with the relationship between narrative structure and the use of tense-aspect forms. Two quite different languages, Polish and Japanese, are investigated and compared.;There is morphological/syntactic/semiological (distributional, evidence for three types of text function in narrative structure: plot, description, and background.;Plot clauses advance the plot line of a narrative and are the backbone of the story. Description clauses provide supplementary material about the setting, describing the physical locus of the action, the physical condition of the participants, their states of mind, etc. Clauses of the third type, background, represent events and situations which are temporally displaced. They are usually subordinated grammatically and always subordinated semantically to clauses of the other two types. When subordinated to plot, they recount a peripheral plot event (i.e. something that can be accorded a distinct temporal slot relative to the plot line but which is not on the central plot line). When subordinated to description, they provide some information about the physical locus, etc. But, unlike the normal description, background clauses communicate some event, the result of which is what pertains to the description. Background clauses are the least commonly occurring type in a typical narrative.;Two narratives, one from each language, and subsequent surveys taken among native speakers provide the data for the analyses conducted here. The Polish narrative was a relatively long, spontaneous oral narrative, while the Japanese narrative was a short portion of a written essay.;It was determined that there is a markedness relation between tense-aspect forms and the three discourse functions. With each function, there was a form or forms likely to occur and others which were unlikely to occur.;The distribution of the tense-aspect forms also gave preliminary indications of a narrative structure that accommodates substories. Relationships between tense-aspect forms and substory representation need further investigation. |
