How traditional Tirax narratives are structured

What is it about?

A defining characteristic of narrative is that the default order of the telling reflects the order of events. But the oral texts of Tirax show other ways of structuring the narrative, often with no special marking to show that the clauses are out of sequence.

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Why is it important?

There is a great body of research on narrative, but there has been relatively little research on narrative in non-European languages with oral traditions. The Tirax data show that while there is a general correlation between narrative clause order and the order of story events, there are many exceptions to sequential ordering, and there is often no specialized marking to indicate the disruptions to sequentiality. In this way, the data from Tirax challenge the scope of conventional theories of narrative. The departures from sequential ordering in Tirax traditional tales appear to reflect the cognitive pressures on a storyteller in a language with no traditional writing system, and they likely help engage the audience and keep them immersed in the oral story.

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