Narrative Acts Catalog

What is a Narrative Act?

A narrative act is a linguistic form that represents a complex action which has a secondary action.

For example : Marc encourages Mary to study hard. «To encourage» is the complex action and «To study hard» is the secondary action. 

A narrative act is characterized by :

• A predicate form : this is very useful because when a narrative act is coded, it's coded with its predicate form (for more information, see predicate form). For example : Encourage(X, Y, a)
• Number of involved characters : this attribute represents the number of characters that are involved when the action is executed. It represents the number of active subjects. Example : Marc tells Mary that July is beautiful.Here Marc and Mary are the only involved characters
• A type : the type defines if the narrative act is an action about an action (AA), an action about a state (AS), a state about an action (SA) or a state about a state (SS)
• A sequence position : the sequence position corresponds to the position of the principal action related to the secondary action. It can be before, during or after.
• A level of abstraction : this attribute corresponds to the complexity of the sentence.
• Valence : valence is a linguistic characteristic of a verb. It corresponds to the number of elements that are connected to that verb. The element can be active or passive. A verb can be avalent (for example : to rain) and it can have a different valence according to how it is used (for example : He gives a gift (v=1). He gives a gift to her (v=2))
• A domain and a Class : a narrative act is classified in domains and classes.