Narratives about personal experiences were elicited from 33 kindergarten children in a suburb of Zurich. The narratives were analyzed for the development of the use of the particle "ebe" from a conversational context (where the use of the particle was already mastered) to an appropriate narrative context (in which the particle, as appropriately used, was new to the children). In the former context, "ebe" is an unstressed modal particle directing the listener's attention to shared and silently acknowledged background information. In the narrative context, "ebe" is stressed and refers to information that has been made explicit in the discourse at hand. The subjects were aware of the oddity of the modal "ebe" in narrative, and tried to repair their statements, apparently becoming aware of the requirements of the narrative register through these "errors." About half the subjects were capable of producing the well-formed narrative that is a prerequisite for the introduction of stressed "ebe," but even these children, with three exceptions, did not use stressed "ebe" successfully. (JB)