10.0621 story grammar

WILLARD MCCARTY (willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk)
Thu, 23 Jan 1997 21:50:26 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 10, No. 621.
Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (Princeton/Rutgers)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Information at http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/

[1] From: Norm Holland <NNH@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU> (15)
Subject: Re: 10.0616 story grammar?

[2] From: Gary Shawver <gshawver@chass.utoronto.ca> (13)
Subject: Re: 10.0616 story grammar?

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Date: Thu, 23 Jan 97 11:03:46 EST
From: Norm Holland <NNH@NERVM.NERDC.UFL.EDU>
Subject: Re: 10.0616 story grammar?

The theory that people usually use for story-grammar is Vladimir
Propp's (based on a phrase-structure grammar). It is not widely
known that there is a much superior story-grammar by George Lakoff
(based on transformational grammar). The only print reference I
have is "Structural Complexity in Fairy Tales," _The Study of Man_
1 (1972): 128-50. The essay was Lakoff's M.A. thesis at Indiana U.
in 1964. To get a copy, you might ewrite to Lakoff at
lakoff@cogsci.berkeley.edu
Good luck, Norm Holland

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Date: 22 Jan 97 18:12:26 +0000
From: Gary Shawver <gshawver@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: 10.0616 story grammar?

Gerald Prince in _A Dictionary of Narratology_ defines "story grammar" as
"A grammar or series of statements and formulas interrelated by an ordered
set or [sic] rules and accounting for (the structure of) a set of STORIES;
a grammar specifying the "natural" constituents of (a set of) stories and
characterizing their relations." His latest bibliographical entry for this
is Black, John G. and Gordon H. Bower. "Story Understanding as
Problem-Solving." _Poetics_ 9:223-50 1980. I'm sure there has been other
work done since then.

Sincerely,
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Gary W. Shawver
E-Mail <gshawver@chass.utoronto.ca>
W3 <http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~gshawver/>
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