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Eighth Tuniso-French seminar in Computer Science

Tunis, May 5-7, 1986

Five Analyses of the Narrative "I First

Got Paid"
Jean-Baptiste BERTHELIN
CNRS LIMSI
BP 133
91403 ORSAY CEDEX

We present a discussion about five ways to analyse a very short narrative

produced by a student of French as a foreign language. The five analyses reflect five
specialized ways of understanding a narrative:
actions should be connected to desires
story characters have differential properties
story events conform to cultural stereotypes
stories deal with deep-running symbols
the author's personal strategy is reflected in the text
2. Full text of the story
"At the end of 1973, I first got paid. I bought a large provision of cigarettes for
my father. He was glad that I acted that way, and did not forget about him. Then I told
him that, being now an employee, I had to get myself a wristwatch, so as not to get
late. On hearing my words, my father took his own golden watch from his wrist and
gave it to me. This is a day I shall remember, indeed. A few months after that, my
father quit smoking".
3. Five analyses
Short as it is, the narrative is excellent "food" for the five kinds of reflexion
mentioned above. The dimension of stereotypes is perhaps the most productive, but
one must be careful not to use a Western "gift" stereotype. The corresponding Eastern
"exchange of gifts" is more convenient in building an explanation to what happens
here.
The "action" perspective states simply that in the beginning was the student's
desire for a wristwatch. This naturally produces an action of the student upon his
father. The father's behaviour is more complex: there are two actions. One, the gift of
the watch, concerns the student. The other one is from the father unto himself, and is
difficult to describe, that is, he turns into a non-smoker.
The "story character" approach starts from the fact that a change affected the
father and tries to relate it to a cause. It could mistakenly select the sentence "he was
glad that I acted that way", but on second thought it is an interesting and useful

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mistake, for if the father had been indifferent in the first place, he would have been
more protected from what immediately follows.
The symbols attached to a wristwatch (e.g. "time is money") are very strong,
but we have no obvious way of connecting them to the present story. More explicitly,
the author does reveal his communicative strategy here, but any discussion of it
requires knowledge of the French source.
Acknowledgements: We thank Mark Twain for My Watch.
REFERENCES
ANONYMOUS : Corpus of fifty French narratives by Chinese authors with topics
Wristwatch, Teachers, Family and others, Peking, 1982 ; available from the author.
BARTHES, R. : S/Z, Seuil, 1970.
BERTHELIN, J. B. : Le traitement du personnage dans un systme de
comprhension automatique du rcit, doctoral dissertation, Universit Paris 6, 1979.
DENHIERE, G. : Il tait une fois, Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1983.
GARDIN, J. C. : Les analyses de discours, Delachaux et Niestl, 1974.
GRAU, B. : Analyse et reprsentation d'un texte d'aprs le thme du discours, thse
de troisime cycle, Universit Paris 6, 1983.
GRICE, H. P. : Logic and conversation, French text in COMMUNICATIONS
numro 30, 1980.
SABAH, G. : Contribution la comprhension effective d'un rcit, thse d'Etat,
Universit Paris 6, 1978.
SABAH, G. : Divers mcanismes d'analyse du langage naturel, Huitime sminaire
tuniso-franais d'informatique, Tunis, 1986
SCHANK, R. & R.P. ABELSON : Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding,
Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977.
SOQUIER, S. H. : Une interprtation automatique de mtaphores : l'exemple des
Cheng Yu, thse de troisime cycle, Universit Paris 6, 1980.