Non-iconic chronology in Russian narrative texts. Its types and motivations

Abstract

Abstract In a narrative text, sequential events are usually presented iconically, i.e. in the linear order of their real succession, cf. Caesar’s famous Veni, vidi, vici (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’). However, the strict chronological order can be broken, as in ‘I conquered after I came (and saw)’. The aim of the present study is to describe such non-iconic cases in quantitative terms on the basis of a corpus compiled from 85 most significant or illustrative works of Russian prose. First, the distribution of iconic and non-iconic cases in syntactic structures of different kind (e.g. with adverbial participles) is described; second, typical structures are analysed in which two sequential events are depicted in reverse order; third, possible motivations for violating the principle of temporal iconicity are studied: the length of clauses (Behaghel’s “law of increasing constituents”), the order of main and subordinate clauses (the Clarks’ “main-clause-first principle”) and the informative status of the clauses (Halliday’s “given-before-new principle” vs. Givon’s “task-urgency principle”).