LANGUAGE REPRESENTATION OF THE TIME CONCEPT IN ENGLISH ORAL NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

This study addresses two interrelated issues: first, the status of narratology, and second, the role of language means in manifestation of the time concept in oral narrative discourse. The article focuses on the semantic, morphological and syntactic means realizing the time concept in English oral narrative discourse. The authors offer their own classification of temporal meanings characteristic of oral narrative discourse. The classification includes the following temporal meanings: succession, priority, simultaneity, frequency / oneness, duration and time localization. The proportion of the defined temporal meanings in the investigated narrative discourses has been quantified as well, proving that the biggest layer of temporally coloured language items is formed by the temporal meaning of succession, while the rest of the meanings form approximately equal layers. The main part of the study presents and analyses language manifestation of each of the singled out temporal meanings in the oral narrative discourse. The study has also revealed a number of language units that can express a few temporal connotations and thus are included into the language bulks representing different temporal meanings. The authors come to affirming the complex nature of a linguistic signal and provide a detailed description how exactly a temporal meaning is signalled at each language level in oral narrative discourse.