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First published in 1990, this collection investigates grammatical categories associated with the verb as they are used by speakers and writers in real discourses and texts. Focusing on tense, aspect, mood, and voice in French, Spanish, and Italian, each chapter underscores the importance of context in our understanding of how grammatical categories work. Above and beyond their basic 'grammatical functions', categories of the verb are shown to operate in such capacities as structuring information in discourse, establishing point of view in a text, and creating textual cohesion. Importantly, this volume reflects the crucial role discourse-pragmatics factors play in our interpretation of the meanings of categories of grammar.
List of contents
Contributors; 1 Introduction Suzanne Fleischman and Linda R. Waugh 2 The temporal structure of discourse: setting, change, and perspective Co Vet 3 Verb tense and point of view in narrative Suzanne Fleischman 4 Tense switching in Italian: the alternation between passato prossimo and passato remote in oral narratives Giulia Centineo 5 Multivalency: the French historical present in journalistic discourse Monique Monville-Burston and Linda R. Waugh 6 The statis of imperatives as discourse signals Béatrice Lamiroy and Pierre Swiggers 7 A contextual reconsideration of the Spanish –ra "indicative" Patricia V. Lunn and Thomas D. Cravens 8 Losing ground: a discourse-pragmatic solution to the history of –ra in Spanish Flora Klein-Andreu 9 The pragmatics of Spanish mood in complements of knowledge and acquisition-of-knowledge predicates Jorge M. Guitart 10 Verbs of cognition in spoken Spanish: A discourse profile Elizabeth G. Weber and Paola Bentivoglio; Index of subjects; Index of names
About the author
Suzanne Fleischman, Linda R. Waugh
Summary
First published in 1990, this collection investigates grammatical categories associated with the verb as they are used by speakers and writers in real discourses and texts. Focusing on tense, aspect, mood, and voice in French, Spanish, and Italian, each chapter underscores the importance of context in our understanding of how grammatical categories work.
