Sur la Syntaxe du Recit Oral

The aim of this article is to argue in favor of a grammar of oral narrative by examining a series of narratives related to the same topic and produced under similar conditions. We will first present a frequency grammar drawn from the systematic study of correlations between various syntactic and enunciative facts. We will then present a sequential grammar which analyses the distribution in the linear arrangement of the narrative of the different types of regularities previously described. These facts will show the relevance of studying frequencies and the importance of taking into account the situations of enunciation in setting up a grammar of oral narrative. Such a grammar cannot be a mere variant of the general grammar of a given language, based on the description of the standard written language.