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Temporal Progression in Film Retellings in Polish: Perspectives on the Interaction of the Imperfective Aspect and Narrative Principles

Publication date: 28.03.2024

Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 19 (2024), Vol. 19, Issue 1, pp. 37 - 60

https://doi.org/10.4467/23005920SPL.24.002.19743

Authors

Jolanta Latkowska
Silesia University, Bankowa 12, 40-007 Katowice
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9478-7689 Orcid
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Titles

Temporal Progression in Film Retellings in Polish: Perspectives on the Interaction of the Imperfective Aspect and Narrative Principles

Abstract

This study examines the temporal architecture of Polish film retellings within the research framework developed by Christiane von Stutterheim and colleagues, who identified grammaticalized progressive and imperfective aspects as powerful agents capable of influencing event construal, and through it, the organisation of discourse. Based on this finding, the study explores 30 offline film retellings to find out whether their narrative structure reflects the patterns attributed to the influence of a grammaticalised imperfective (IMPF). The results show that narrators consistently build the storyline using the present tense and the IMPF. In Polish, present tense verb forms encode the IMPF predominantly in the stem or in a grammaticalised secondary imperfective (SI) marker. As revealed by the study, the SI is used rather sparingly in the retellings. Another feature of note is a scarcity of connectives, found to coincide with the presence of grammaticalised imperfective markers in the languages examined under the framework. The study concludes that, due to low usage rates for the SI, there is not sufficient evidence to support the existence of a causal relationship between the grammaticalisation of the IMPF and narrative frames in Polish, and points to a formative role of discourse mode dynamics in shaping temporal progression.

References

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Information

Information: Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 19 (2024), Vol. 19, Issue 1, pp. 37 - 60

Article type: Original article

Titles:

English:

Temporal Progression in Film Retellings in Polish: Perspectives on the Interaction of the Imperfective Aspect and Narrative Principles

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9478-7689

Jolanta Latkowska
Silesia University, Bankowa 12, 40-007 Katowice
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9478-7689 Orcid
All publications →

Silesia University, Bankowa 12, 40-007 Katowice

Published at: 28.03.2024

Article status: Open

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Jolanta Latkowska (Author) - 100%

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