The book offers a novel approach to the question of how to model narrativity against the background of perspectivization. By bringing together contributions from neuro- and cognitive linguistics, literary studies, and picture theory, the volume uncovers basic mechanisms of perspectivization that are common to the different levels of linguistic structure, literary novels, and narrative pictures. As such, it is also a book on narrative perspectivization since its contributions examine in detail the perspectival principles in medieval, romantic and postmodern literature, in the micro-linguistic structure of language, narrative pictures, literary novels, dramatic texts, and everyday stories.

The four papers presented in this volume are corpus-based investigations into the meaning of the verbs speak, talk, say and tell. More specifically they want to explore how the scene of linguistic action has been put into perspective by these four high-frequency verbs.