Narreme is the basic unit of

narrative structure Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and sometimes specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: ...

. According to Helmut Bonheim (2000), the concept of ''narreme'' was developed three decades earlier by Eugene Dorfman and expanded by Henri Wittmann, the narreme is to

narratology Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. The term is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretica ...

what the

sememe A sememe (; ) is a semantic language unit of meaning, analogous to a morpheme. The concept is relevant in structural semiotics. A seme is a proposed unit of transmitted or intended meaning; it is atomic or indivisible. A sememe can be the meaning ...

is to

semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

, the

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

is to

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

and the

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

. The narreme, however, has yet to be persuasively defined in practice. In interpretative narratology constrained in a framework of

principles and parameters Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general ''principles'' (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific ''parameters'' (i.e. markers, sw ...

, narration is the projection of a narreme N⁰, the abstract head of a narrative macrostructure where N^''n'' dominates immediately N^''n''-1 (Wittmann 1995).In this author's views, narremes are the constituents of narrative

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...

s, a concept that has found applications in

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...

and

game semantics Game semantics is an approach to Formal semantics (logic), formal semantics that grounds the concepts of truth or Validity (logic), validity on Game theory, game-theoretic concepts, such as the existence of a winning strategy for a player. In this ...

(Shivel 2009)

Notes

{{Reflist

Bibliography

*Bonheim, Helmut. 2000. "Shakespeare's narremes." In: ''Shakespeare Survey 53: Shakespeare and narrative''. Edited by Peter Holland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–1

*Dorfman, Eugène. 1969. ''The narreme in the medieval romance epic: An introduction to narrative structures''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. *Schärfe, Henrik. 2004. ''CANA: A study in computer-aided narrative analysis''. Aalborg University, Dept. of Communication: Ph.D. dissertation. *Shivel, Gail. 2009. "World of Warcraft: The Murloc is the Message." ''Symplokê'' 17:1-2.205-21

*Tusseau, Jean-Pierre & Henri Wittmann. 1975. "Règles de narration dans les chansons de geste et le roman courtois". ''Folia linguistica'' 7.401-1

*Wittmann, Henri. 1974. "Topics in the theory of narrative algorithms." Travaux linguistiques de l'Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières 3.

*Wittmann, Henri. 1975. "Théorie des narrèmes et algorithmes narratifs". ''Poetics'' 4:1.19-2

*Wittmann, Henri. 1995. "La structure de base de la syntaxe narrative dans les contes et légendes du créole haïtien." ''Poétiques et imaginaires: francopolyphonie littéraire des Amériques''. Edited by Pierre Laurette & Hans-George Ruprecht. Paris: L'Harmattan, pp. 207–21

Narrative units, Narratology

See also

Notes

Bibliography