DEICTIC CENTERS
AND THE COGNITIVE STRUCTURE
OF NARRATIVE COMPREHENSION

Since the early 1980s, we have been conducting an interdisciplinary, cognitive-science research project on the comprehension of narrative text. The unifying theme of our work has been the notion of a deictic center: a mental model of spatial, temporal, and character information contributed by the reader of the narrative and used by the reader in understanding the narrative. We examine the deictic center in the light of our investigations from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, individual differences (language pathology), literary theory of narrative, and artificial intelligence. Although our formal research project has ended, much of the current research of the individual members continues and extends the work begun in this project.

For further information, see:

• Bruder, Gail A.; Duchan, Judith F.; Rapaport, William J.; Segal, Erwin M.; Shapiro, Stuart C.; & Zubin, David A. (1986), "Deictic Centers in Narrative: An Interdisciplinary Cognitive-Science Project", Technical Report 86-20 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science).

  Abstract: This research program consists of a group of projects whose goals are to develop a psychologically real model of a cognitive agent's comprehension of deictic information in narrative text. We will test the hypothesis that the construction and modification of a "deictic center"--the locus in conceptual space-time of the characters, objects, and events depicted by the sentences currently being perceived--is important for comprehension. To test this hypothesis, we plan to develop a computer system that will "read" a narrative and answer questions concerning the agent's beliefs about the objects, relations, and events in the narrative. The final system will be psychologically real, because the details of the algorithms and the efficacy of the linguistic devices will be validated by psychological experiments on normal and abnormal comprehenders. This project will lead to a better understanding of how people comprehend narrative text, it will advance the state of machine understanding, and it will provide insight into the nature of comprehension disorders and their potential remediation.

• Rapaport, William J.; Segal, Erwin M.; Shapiro, Stuart C.; Zubin, David A.; Bruder, Gail A.; Duchan, Judith F.; Almeida, Michael J.; Daniels, Joyce H.; Galbraith, Mary M.; Wiebe, Janyce M.; & Yuhan, Albert Hanyong (1989), "Deictic Centers and the Cognitive Structure of Narrative Comprehension", Technical Report 89-01 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science).

  Abstract: This paper discusses the theoretical background and the preliminary results of an interdisciplinary, cognitive-science research project on the comprehension of narrative text. The unifying theme of our work has been the notion of a deictic center: a mental model of spatial, temporal, and character information contributed by the reader of the narrative and used by the reader in understanding the narrative. We examine the deictic center in the light of our investigations from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, individual differences (language pathology), literary theory of narrative, and artificial intelligence.

• Rapaport, William J.; Segal, Erwin M.; Shapiro, Stuart C.; Zubin, David A.; Bruder, Gail A.; Duchan, Judith F.; & Mark, David M. (1989), "Cognitive and Computer Systems for Understanding Narrative Text", Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science).

  Abstract: This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children's acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF.

• Duchan, Judith Felson; Bruder, Gail A.; & Hewitt, Lynne E. (eds.) (1995), Deixis in Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).

  Table of Contents:

  • Duchan, Judith F.; Bruder, Gail A.; & Hewitt, Lynne E., "Preface": xi-xvi.

  • Duchan, Judith F.; Bruder, Gail A.; & Hewitt, Lynne E., "Prologue: A Simple Exercise in Narrative Understanding": xvii-xix.

    Part I. Deictic Theory

    1. Segal, Erwin M., "Narrative Comprehension and the Role of Deictic Shift Theory":3-17.

    2. Galbraith, Mary, "Deictic Shift Theory and the Poetics of Involvement in Narrative": 19-59.
       • See also:
         Jones, Josh (2012), "Enthusiastic Futurist Jason Silva Waxes Theoretical About the Immersive Power of Cinema", Openculture (13 December).

    3. Segal, Erwin M., "A Cognitive-Phenomenological Theory of Fictional Narrative": 61-78.

    4. Shapiro, Stuart C.; & Rapaport, William J., "An Introduction to a Computational Reader of Narrative": 79-105.

    5. Rapaport, William J.; & Shapiro, Stuart C., "Cognition and Fiction": 107-128.

    6. Zubin, David A.; & Hewitt, Lynne E. "The Deictic Center: A Theory of Deixis in Narrative": 129-155.

       Part II. Deictic Tracking in Narrative

    7. Almeida, Michael J., "Time in Narratives": 159-189.

    8. Yuhan, Albert Hanyong; & Shapiro, Stuart C., "Computational Representation of Space": 191-225.

    9. Duchan, Judith F., "Preschool Children's Introduction of Characters into Their Oral Stories: Evidence for Deictic Organization of First Narratives": 227-241.

    10. Bruder, Gail A., "Psychological Evidence that Linguistic Devices Are Used by Readers to Understand Spatial Deixis in Narrative Text": 243-260.

        Part III. Subjectivity in Narrative

    11. Wiebe, Janyce M., "References in Narrative Text": 263-286.

    12. Li, Naiçong; & Zubin, David A., "Discourse Continuity and Perspective Taking": 287-307.

    13. Chun, Soon Ae; & Zubin, David A., "Experiential versus Agentive Constructions in Korean Narrative": 309-323.

    14. Hewitt, Lynne E., "Anaphor in Subjective Contexts in Narrative Fiction": 325-339.

    15. Bruder, Gail A.; & Wiebe, Janyce M., "Recognizing Subjectivity and Identifying Subjective Characters in Third-Person Fictional Narrative": 341-356.

        Part IV. Extensions of Deictic Theory

    16. Wilkins, David P., "Expanding the Traditional Category of Deictic Elements: Interjections as Deictics": 359-386.

    17. Mark, David M., & Gould, Michael D., "Wayfinding Directions as Discourse: Verbal Directions in English and Spanish": 387-405.

    18. Hosenfeld, Carol; Duchan, Judith F.; & Higginbotham, Jeffery "Deixis in Persuasive Texts Written by Bilinguals of Differing Degrees of Expertise": 407-420.

    19. Talmy, Leonard "Narrative Structure in a Cognitive Framework": 421-460.

    20. Costello, Anne M.; Bruder, Gail A.; Hosenfeld, Carol; & Duchan, Judith F., "A Structural Analysis of A Fictional Narrative: `A Free Night', by Anne Maury Costello": 461-485.

        References: 487-505.

• Galbraith, Mary, "Deictic Shift Theory" (July 2021) [ link]
  Published in a French translation by Sylvie Patron as "Théorie du déplacement déictique/Deictic Shift Theory" (Réseau des Narratologues Francophones/Pôle de Narratologie Transmédiale, 2021)

• Also see: http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Deixis_95.html
  • Contains abstracts of the papers in the book!

• Also see: Powerpoint slide show

• Also see:
  1. Graesser, Arthur C.; & Bowers, Cheryl A. (1996), Review of Duchan et al., Minds and Machines 6(3): 395-399.

  2. Zwaan, Rolf A. (1999), "Situation Models: The Mental leap into Imagined Worlds", Current Directions in Psychological Science 8(1): 15-18; reprinted in Barbara A. Spellman & Daniel T. Willingham (eds.), Current Directions in Cognitive Science (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005): 146-151.

  Partial List of Participants

  Artificial Intelligence:	Linguistics:
  Michael Almeida	Soon Ae Chun
  Elissa Feit	Daniel Devitt
  Alexander Nakhimovsky	Matthew Dryer
  Sandra Peters	Patricia Fox
  William J. Rapaport	Wynne Janis
  Stuart C. Shapiro	Naicong Li
  Janyce M. Wiebe	Soteria Svorou
  Albert Hanyong Yuhan	Leonard Talmy
  	Noriko Watanabe
  Communicative Disorders:	David P. Wilkins
  Judith Felson Duchan	David A. Zubin
  Lynne E. Hewitt
  Jeffery Higginbotham	Literary Practice:
  Rae Sonnenmeier	Anne M. Costello
  Education:	Literary Theory:
  Carol Hosenfeld	Mary Galbraith
  Geography:	Philosophy:
  Scott Freundschuh	William J. Rapaport
  Michael D. Gould,
  David M. Mark	Psychology:
  	Gail A. Bruder
  	Joyce H. Daniels
  	Lorraine Engl
  	Penny Nuwer
  	Paula Scott
  	Erwin M. Segal
  	Andrea Carol Siegel

  
  
  

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  Copyright © 2001–2021 by William J. Rapaport (rapaport@buffalo.edu)
  http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/dc.html-20210809