A Semantically-Based Computational Approach to Narrative Structure

In this paper we will define narrative structure as characterized by a basic element, the narreme, which is here described as the basic unit of narrative structure, the smallest possible unit of the story. We annotated a full novel – "The Solid Mandala" (1966) by Nobel laureate Patrick White – combining two approaches: one is related to sentiment and opinion mining, including deeper aspects connected to event factuality and subjectivity, and the other focuses on evaluative features derived from the Appraisal Theory framework. After characterizing the style, we will show the main significant events of the plot as they emerge from the distribution of deep semantic features. Narreme boundaries will be identified by presence of specific speech acts, change of point of view, and movement in spatio-temporal coordinates through flashbacks. An experiment with our system of text understanding, GETARUNS, has been carried out to test its ability to automatically identify narremes.