First published in 1990, this collection investigates grammatical categories associated with the verb as they are used by speakers and writers in real discourses and texts. Focusing on tense, aspect, mood, and voice in French, Spanish, and Italian, each chapter underscores the importance of context in our understanding of how grammatical categories work.

Contributors; 1 Introduction Suzanne Fleischman and Linda R. Waugh 2 The temporal structure of discourse: setting, change, and perspective Co Vet 3 Verb tense and point of view in narrative Suzanne Fleischman 4 Tense switching in Italian: the alternation between passato prossimo and passato remote in oral narratives Giulia Centineo 5 Multivalency: the French historical present in journalistic discourse Monique Monville-Burston and Linda R. Waugh 6 The statis of imperatives as discourse signals Béatrice Lamiroy and Pierre Swiggers 7 A contextual reconsideration of the Spanish –ra "indicative" Patricia V. Lunn and Thomas D. Cravens 8 Losing ground: a discourse-pragmatic solution to the history of –ra in Spanish Flora Klein-Andreu 9 The pragmatics of Spanish mood in complements of knowledge and acquisition-of-knowledge predicates Jorge M. Guitart 10 Verbs of cognition in spoken Spanish: A discourse profile Elizabeth G. Weber and Paola Bentivoglio; Index of subjects; Index of names