Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2016.11
Pablo Gervás, Raquel Hervás, C. León, C. Gale
Although theoretical models of the structure of narrative arising from systematic analysis of corpora are available for domains such as Russian folk tales, there are no such sources for the plot lines of musical theatre. The present paper reports an effort of knowledge elicitation for features that characterise the narrative structure of plot in the particular domain of musical theatre. The following aspects are covered: identification of a valid vocabulary of abstract units to use in annotating musical theatre plots, development of a procedure for annotation - including a spread-sheet format for annotators to use, and a corresponding set of instructions to guide them through the process - selection of a corpus of musical theatre pieces that would constitute the corpus to be annotated, the annotation process itself and the results of post-processing the annotated corpus in search for insights on the narrative structure of musical theatre plots.
{"title":"Annotating Musical Theatre Plots on Narrative Structure and Emotional Content","authors":"Pablo Gervás, Raquel Hervás, C. León, C. Gale","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2016.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2016.11","url":null,"abstract":"Although theoretical models of the structure of narrative arising from systematic analysis of corpora are available for domains such as Russian folk tales, there are no such sources for the plot lines of musical theatre. The present paper reports an effort of knowledge elicitation for features that characterise the narrative structure of plot in the particular domain of musical theatre. The following aspects are covered: identification of a valid vocabulary of abstract units to use in annotating musical theatre plots, development of a procedure for annotation - including a spread-sheet format for annotators to use, and a corresponding set of instructions to guide them through the process - \u0000 selection of a corpus of musical theatre pieces that would constitute the corpus to be annotated, the annotation process itself and the results of post-processing the annotated corpus in search for insights on the narrative structure of musical theatre plots.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129701854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.251
Iraide Zipitria, Nerea Portu-Zapirain
Children narratives implicitly represent their experiences and emotions. The relationships infants establish with their environment will shape their relationships with others and the concept of themselves. In this context, the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) contains a series of unfinished stories to project the self in relation to attachment. Unfinished story procedures present a dilemma which needs to be solved and a codification of the secure, secure/insecure or insecure attachment categories. This paper analyses a story-corpus to explain 3 to 6 year old children-parent attachment relationships. It is a computational approach to exploring attachment representational models in two unfinished story-lines: "The stolen bike" and "The present". The resulting corpora contains 184 stories in one corpus and 170 stories in the other. The Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) computational frameworks observe the emotions which children project. As a result, the computational analysis of the children mental representational model, in both corpora, have shown to be comparable to expert judgements in attachment categorization.
{"title":"A Computational Narrative Analysis of Children-Parent Attachment Relationships","authors":"Iraide Zipitria, Nerea Portu-Zapirain","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.251","url":null,"abstract":"Children narratives implicitly represent their experiences and emotions. The relationships infants establish with their environment will shape their relationships with others and the concept of themselves. In this context, the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) contains a series of unfinished stories to project the self in relation to attachment. Unfinished story procedures present a dilemma which needs to be solved and a codification of the secure, secure/insecure or insecure attachment categories. This paper analyses a story-corpus to explain 3 to 6 year old children-parent attachment relationships. It is a computational approach to exploring attachment representational models in two unfinished story-lines: \"The stolen bike\" and \"The present\". The resulting corpora contains 184 stories in one corpus and 170 stories in the other. The Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) computational frameworks observe the emotions which children project. As a result, the computational analysis of the children mental representational model, in both corpora, have shown to be comparable to expert judgements in attachment categorization.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125309578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2016.7
W. V. Yarlott, Mark A. Finlayson
Motifs are distinctive recurring elements found in folklore, and are used by folklorists to categorize and find tales across cultures and track the genetic relationships of tales over time. Motifs have significance beyond folklore as communicative devices found in news, literature, press releases, and propaganda that concisely imply a large constellation of culturally-relevant information. Until now, folklorists have only extracted motifs from narratives manually, and the conceptual structure of motifs has not been formally laid out. In this short paper we propose that it is possible to automate the extraction of both existing and new motifs from narratives using supervised learning techniques and thereby possible to learn a computational model of how folklorists determine motifs. Automatic extraction would enable the construction of a truly comprehensive motif index, which does not yet exist, as well as the automatic detection of motifs in cultural materials, opening up a new world of narrative information for analysis by anyone interested in narrative and culture. We outline an experimental design, and report on our efforts to produce a structured form of Thompson's motif index, as well as a development annotation of motifs in a small collection of Russian folklore. We propose several initial computational, supervised approaches, and describe several possible metrics of success. We describe lessons learned and difficulties encountered so far, and outline our plan going forward.
{"title":"Learning a Better Motif Index: Toward Automated Motif Extraction","authors":"W. V. Yarlott, Mark A. Finlayson","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2016.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2016.7","url":null,"abstract":"Motifs are distinctive recurring elements found in folklore, and are used by folklorists to categorize and find tales across cultures and track the genetic relationships of tales over time. Motifs have significance beyond folklore as communicative devices found in news, literature, press releases, and propaganda that concisely imply a large constellation of culturally-relevant information. Until now, folklorists have only extracted motifs from narratives manually, and the conceptual structure of motifs has not been formally laid out. In this short paper we propose that it is possible to automate the extraction of both existing and new motifs from narratives using supervised learning techniques and thereby possible to learn a computational model of how folklorists determine motifs. Automatic extraction would enable the construction of a truly comprehensive motif index, which does not yet exist, as well as the automatic detection of motifs in cultural materials, opening up a new world of narrative information for analysis by anyone interested in narrative and culture. We outline an experimental design, and report on our efforts to produce a structured form of Thompson's motif index, as well as a development annotation of motifs in a small collection of Russian folklore. We propose several initial computational, supervised approaches, and describe several possible metrics of success. We describe lessons learned and difficulties encountered so far, and outline our plan going forward.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116393975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.54
Pablo Gervás, C. León, Gonzalo Méndez
Computational generation of literary artifacts very often resorts to template-like schemas that can be instantiated into complex structures. With this view in mind, the present paper reviews a number of existing attempts to provide an elementary set of patterns for basic plots. An attempt is made to formulate these descriptions of possible plots in terms of character functions, an abstraction of plot-bearing elements of a story originally formulated by Vladimir Propp. These character functions act as the building blocks of the Propper system, an existing framework for computational story generation. The paper explores the set of extensions required to the original set of character functions to allow for a basic representation of the analysed schemata, and a solution for automatic generation of stories based on this formulation of the narrative schemas. This solution uncovers important insights on the relative expressive power of the representation of narrative in terms of character functions, and their impact on the generative potential of the framework is discussed.
{"title":"Schemas for Narrative Generation Mined from Existing Descriptions of Plot","authors":"Pablo Gervás, C. León, Gonzalo Méndez","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.54","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.54","url":null,"abstract":"Computational generation of literary artifacts very often resorts to template-like schemas that can be instantiated into complex structures. With this view in mind, the present paper reviews a number of existing attempts to provide an elementary set of patterns for basic plots. An attempt is made to formulate these descriptions of possible plots in terms of character functions, an abstraction of plot-bearing elements of a story originally formulated by Vladimir Propp. These character functions act as the building blocks of the Propper system, an existing framework for computational story generation. The paper explores the set of extensions required to the original set of character functions to allow for a basic representation of the analysed schemata, and a solution for automatic generation of stories based on this formulation of the narrative schemas. This solution uncovers important insights on the relative expressive power of the representation of narrative in terms of character functions, and their impact on the generative potential of the framework is discussed.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121706962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.166
Nir Ofek, Sándor Darányi, L. Rokach
Abstract units of narrative content called motifs constitute sequences, also known as tale types. However whereas the dependency of tale types on the constituent motifs is clear, the strength of their bond has not been measured this far. Based on the observation that differences between such motif sequences are reminiscent of nucleotide and chromosome mutations in genetics, i.e., constitute "narrative DNA", we used sequence mining methods from bioinformatics to learn more about the nature of tale types as a corpus. 94% of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther catalogue (2249 tale types in 7050 variants) was listed as individual motif strings based on the Thompson Motif Index, and scanned for similar subsequences. Next, using machine learning algorithms, we built and evaluated a classifier which predicts the tale type of a new motif sequence. Our findings indicate that, due to the size of the available samples, the classification model was best able to predict magic tales, novelles and jokes.
{"title":"Linking Motif Sequences with Tale Types by Machine Learning","authors":"Nir Ofek, Sándor Darányi, L. Rokach","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.166","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract units of narrative content called motifs constitute sequences, also known as tale types. However whereas the dependency of tale types on the constituent motifs is clear, the strength of their bond has not been measured this far. Based on the observation that differences between such motif sequences are reminiscent of nucleotide and chromosome mutations in genetics, i.e., constitute \"narrative DNA\", we used sequence mining methods from bioinformatics to learn more about the nature of tale types as a corpus. 94% of the Aarne-Thompson-Uther catalogue (2249 tale types in 7050 variants) was listed as individual motif strings based on the Thompson Motif Index, and scanned for similar subsequences. Next, using machine learning algorithms, we built and evaluated a classifier which predicts the tale type of a new motif sequence. Our findings indicate that, due to the size of the available samples, the classification model was best able to predict magic tales, novelles and jokes.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116523509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.241
M. Erp, Antske Fokkens, P. Vossen
Information professionals face the challenge of making sense of an ever increasing amount of information. Storylines can provide a useful way to present relevant information because they reveal explanatory relations between events. In this position paper, we present and discuss the four main challenges that make it difficult to get to these stories and our first ideas on how to start resolving them.
{"title":"Finding Stories in 1, 784, 532 Events: Scaling Up Computational Models of Narrative","authors":"M. Erp, Antske Fokkens, P. Vossen","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.241","url":null,"abstract":"Information professionals face the challenge of making sense of an ever increasing amount of information. Storylines can provide a useful way to present relevant information because they reveal explanatory relations between events. In this position paper, we present and discuss the four main challenges that make it difficult to get to these stories and our first ideas on how to start resolving them.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126224499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.77
J. Kauttonen, Mauri Kaipainen, Pia Tikka
Cognitive neurosciences have made significant progress in learning about brain activity in situatedcognition, thanks to adopting stimuli that simulate immersion in naturalistic conditions insteadof ...
{"title":"Model of Narrative Nowness for Neurocinematic Experiments","authors":"J. Kauttonen, Mauri Kaipainen, Pia Tikka","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.77","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2014.77","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive neurosciences have made significant progress in learning about brain activity in situatedcognition, thanks to adopting stimuli that simulate immersion in naturalistic conditions insteadof ...","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126080284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.214
Antoine Saillenfest, J. Dessalles
The challenge of narrative automatic generation is to produce not only coherent, but interesting stories. This study considers the problem within the Simplicity Theory framework. According to this theory, interesting situations must be unexpectedly simple, either because they should have required complex circumstances to be produced, or because they are abnormally simple, as in coincidences. Here we consider the special case of narratives in which characters perform actions with emotional consequences. We show, using the simplicity framework, how notions such as intentions, believability, responsibility and moral judgments are linked to narrative interest.
{"title":"Using Unexpected Simplicity to Control Moral Judgments and Interest in Narratives","authors":"Antoine Saillenfest, J. Dessalles","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.214","url":null,"abstract":"The challenge of narrative automatic generation is to produce not only coherent, but interesting stories. This study considers the problem within the Simplicity Theory framework. According to this theory, interesting situations must be unexpectedly simple, either because they should have required complex circumstances to be produced, or because they are abnormally simple, as in coincidences. Here we consider the special case of narratives in which characters perform actions with emotional consequences. We show, using the simplicity framework, how notions such as intentions, believability, responsibility and moral judgments are linked to narrative interest.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127011260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.39
David A. Caswell
This paper describes Structured Stories, a platform for producing and consuming journalism as structured narratives based on instantiations of event frames. The event frames are defined using FrameNet and are instantiated as structured events using references to nodes in various knowledge graphs. Structured narratives with recursive, fractal and network characteristics are then assembled from these structured events. The approach requires the direct reporting of journalistic events into structure by untrained reporters, and utilizes a simplified sequential user interface to achieve this. A prototype has been built and published, and is being applied to the reporting of local government journalism to explore editorial aspects of the approach.
{"title":"Structured Narratives as a Framework for Journalism: A Work in Progress","authors":"David A. Caswell","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2015.39","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes Structured Stories, a platform for producing and consuming journalism as structured narratives based on instantiations of event frames. The event frames are defined using FrameNet and are instantiated as structured events using references to nodes in various knowledge graphs. Structured narratives with recursive, fractal and network characteristics are then assembled from these structured events. The approach requires the direct reporting of journalistic events into structure by untrained reporters, and utilizes a simplified sequential user interface to achieve this. A prototype has been built and published, and is being applied to the reporting of local government journalism to explore editorial aspects of the approach.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114701190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.183
G. Sack
This paper models narrative as a complex adaptive system in which the temporal sequence of events constituting a story emerges out of cascading local interactions between nodes in a social network. The approach is not intended as a general theory of narrative, but rather as a particular generative mechanism relevant to several academic communities: (1) literary critics and narrative theorists interested in new models for narrative analysis, (2) artificial intelligence researchers and video game designers interested in new mechanisms for narrative generation, and (3) complex systems theorists interested in novel applications of agent-based modeling and network theory. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part offers examples of research by literary critics on the relationship between social networks of fictional characters and the structure of long-form narratives, particularly novels. The second part provides an example of schematic story generation based on a simulation of the structural balance network model. I will argue that if literary critics can better understand sophisticated narratives by extracting networks from them, then narrative intelligence researchers can benefit by inverting the process, that is, by generating narratives from networks.
{"title":"Character Networks for Narrative Generation: Structural Balance Theory and the Emergence of Proto-Narratives","authors":"G. Sack","doi":"10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.CMN.2013.183","url":null,"abstract":"This paper models narrative as a complex adaptive system in which the temporal sequence of events constituting a story emerges out of cascading local interactions between nodes in a social network. The approach is not intended as a general theory of narrative, but rather as a particular generative mechanism relevant to several academic communities: (1) literary critics and narrative theorists interested in new models for narrative analysis, (2) artificial intelligence researchers and video game designers interested in new mechanisms for narrative generation, and (3) complex systems theorists interested in novel applications of agent-based modeling and network theory. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part offers examples of research by literary critics on the relationship between social networks of fictional characters and the structure of long-form narratives, particularly novels. The second part provides an example of schematic story generation based on a simulation of the structural balance network model. I will argue that if literary critics can better understand sophisticated narratives by extracting networks from them, then narrative intelligence researchers can benefit by inverting the process, that is, by generating narratives from networks.","PeriodicalId":311534,"journal":{"name":"Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121825063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}