Verb syntax in 13th century Tuscan prose or tense and aspect in Old Italian

The formal analysis of Tuscan prose works in thirteenth century raises the general impression of a close relationship between narratological and synta ctic structures. The constant use of preterit tenses, required by the narra tion, causes the presentation of themes to be committed to perfective ones and their development to coordinate phrases and, less frequently, dependent clauses, whose tense was mostly the imperfect. Literary prose writers-in o rder to perform a narrative text, obviously with specific differences-appea r to have at their disposition a set of determined schemes. They resulted i n formal contrasts, which were syntactically based on the verbal aspect and wee both particularly efficacious and psychologically challenging by means of the opposition between the cognitive categories of discontinuous vs. co ntinuous, momentary vs. durative, thematic vs. rhematic, real vs. hypotheti cal, objective vs. subjective. To a great extent the attractive of those pr ose works is due to(spontaneous or cleverly intentional) use of these alter nances: therefore today readers may also judge their form to be more intere sting than their contents.