The article is devoted to a separate variety of statements: statements reporting the content of other statements. The author refers to this type of speech as 'retelling' (Russian: pereskaz) and points to its use in presenting the content of literary works, journalistic texts, various cultural texts (film, opera, ballet, etc.) and, less frequently, also spoken statements. One typical where these forms occur are headlines reporting on the content of the following text and stage directions.

more »

... ing' is characterized by specific ways of using the forms of the perfective and imperfective aspects of the verb and the use of temporal forms of the verb, different from the usual dependence of tenses (such as 'future in the past'). This is justified by their metatextual function. In these cases, there is a transition to the second or even third level of temporal deixis, when events are not presented (as opposed to a simple statement) from the point of view of the 'here and now' of the current sender but, instead, presented as elements of the reality already presented in the previous statement and reported from the perspective of its author or recipient/interpreter (who may assume different time perspectives vis-à-vis the content of the presented text). A thorough analysis of the material illustrating the 'retelling' in the article reveals specific cases of synonymy between different tense-aspect verb forms.