Emphasizing and Non-Emphasizing Second Tenses in the Myth of the Sun's Eye *

Abstract

The main functions of the Second Tenses in the Leiden version of the Myth of the Sun's Eye are examined, with particular attention to those instances which are not best described as serving to stress an adverbial adjunct. In fact, Second Tenses, as a means of structuring a text, appear to have a broader range of usages; in particular, they are used to delimit a macrosyntactic unit, to convey a temporal/conditional or an injunctive force and to mark contrastive or restrictive emphasis. Their key role in this rather elaborate text is probably that of introducing glosses.