What we do in the shadows of the pear tree: Tense switching in Shughni Pear Stories

Indo-Iranian Languages. 2026. Vol. 2. No. 1. P. 74–99.

Melenchenko M.

This article presents the results of a study on the narrative functions of verb tenses in Shughni. Shughni is an Eastern Iranian language with a compact TAME system, which has tensed evidentials (with Preterite being the direct past and Perfect, the indirect past) and lacks grammaticalized aspect. The current study analyzes five narrations of the Pear Film plot by native Shughni speakers recorded in Kharagh in 2023. The Pear Film is a famous short film devised for linguistic experiments. For analysis, I used only independent clauses, as suggested by the Labovian framework of narrative analysis. Three consultants watched the film directly, while the other two only knew its plot as rendered by another speaker. They were then asked to retell the plot of the film in Shughni. This difference in the source information did not produce a definitive influence on the speakers’ tense choice. Four consultants used the Present as the main narrative tense, while the fifth preferred the Preterite. It is unclear what motivates the choice of the narrative tense, and further study on this topic is necessary. All the five consultants switched to other tenses at least a few times. In Present-tense narratives, the Preterite and the Perfect are used to refer to past events. The Perfect is employed for events that were not witnessed by the narrator or the characters and therefore is often attested in backgrounding contexts denoting events outside of the main plot line. On the other hand, the Preterite is used for witnessed past events. In Preterite-tense narratives, the speaker often switches to the Present to denote imperfective events. The particle ɣal ‘still, while’ is often used in Present- tense clauses, functioning as an additional imperfective marker. Sequences of tensed verbs are often interrupted by clauses with the null copula. It is frequent even in Preterite-tense narratives where Russian translations use the past form of the verb of being. This fact indicates that the null copula is to some extent “tenseless” in narrative discourse.

Keywords: нарратив, narrative, Shughni, шугнанский язык, памирские языки, Pamir languages, фильм о грушах, tense switching, Pear Film, переключение времен