Tense–aspect variation across oral narrative types: a corpus-based comparative study of Russian and Polish

This study investigates the distribution of tense and aspect in oral narratives in Russian and Polish, with a particular focus on the influence of narrative task type and cross-linguistic differences between two closely related Slavic languages. Drawing on a methodologically aligned corpus of elicited oral narratives, the analysis compares four narrative tasks – biographical narratives, picture descriptions, and two picture-based story tellings differing in addressee orientation – across the two languages. All analyses are based on aggregated corpus data and focus on finite verb forms annotated for tense and, in past contexts, aspect. Quantitative corpus-linguistic methods are combined with chi-square tests to assess the significance of task-related and cross-linguistic differences. The results demonstrate a robust effect of narrative task type on tense distribution in both languages and reveal systematic, task-sensitive variation in aspectual choice, particularly within past tense forms. While Russian and Polish both show a general preference for past tense in narrative discourse, Polish exhibits a consistently higher proportion of present tense forms, a pattern that can be partly explained by typological differences such as the overt marking of the present tense copula. Crucially, the study reveals that aspectual distributions vary significantly across narrative tasks and, in Polish, are additionally sensitive to addressee orientation. These findings challenge the assumption of a uniform tense–aspect distribution in narrative data and underscore the need for task-sensitive and pragmatically informed approaches in cross-linguistic research on Russian and Polish aspect and tense.