This study breaks new ground in describing how linguistic and pragmatic machanisms affect the syntax of the narrative clause, classifying its various forms in terms of 'topic-comment' and 'focus-presupposition', and showing that how these are articulated dictates the word order. Heimerdinger argues that the traditional distinction between forground and background is inadequate; rather, foregrounding is achieved by exloring cognitive structures or by using specificl evaluative devices.