Discourse Processes: To Cite This Article: James Paul Gee (1986) Units in The Production of Narrative

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Discourse Processes
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Units in the production of narrative discourse

James Paul Gee
a a
Applied Psycholinguistics Program , Boston University , 605 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA, 02215 Published online: 11 Nov 2009.
To cite this article: James Paul Gee (1986) Units in the production of narrative discourse, Discourse Processes, 9:4, 391-422, DOI: 10.1080/01638538609544650 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01638538609544650
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DISCOURSE PROCESSES 9, 391-422 (1986)
Units in the Production of Narrative Discourse

JAMES PAUL GEE Boston University
Psycholinguistics is interested in discovering what linguistic units people use online in the production of speech. At the level of the sentence, almost all investigators have agreed that words and phrases are important units (Clark & Clark, 1977; Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, 1974). However, it is not yet clear whether these units, as they are used in the production system, should be defined purely in syntactic terms, or partially also in phonological terms (Gee & Grosjean, 1984; Selkirk, 1984). Above the level of the sentence, at the discourse level, there is much less agreement about what the important units might be. Linguists disagree as to what units should be posited in a competence theory for discourse, and they even disagree as to whether the theory of competence should in fact be extended beyond the level of the sentence to the level of discourse at all (Chomsky, 1975; Givon, 1979a, 1979b; Williams, 1977). Both at the levels of competence and performance, work on story grammars, schemas and scripts, macrostructures, text grammars, and several sorts of conversational analysis have yielded a bewildering array of suggestions about discourse structures (Gumperz, 1982; Kintsch, 1977; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; Labov & Waletsky, 1967; Lehnert, 1981; Mandler, 1978, 1982, 1984; Mandler & Goodman, 1982; Mandler & Johnson, 1977; Perfetti, 1982; Propp, 1968; Reiser & Black, 1982; Reiser,
I am much in the debt of Sarah Michaels from Harvard University for supplying me with tape recordings and transcripts of the two narratives of the young black child whose stories are analyzed in this paper. I have followed, in almost all cases, herprosodic transcription of the data. I am also in the debt of Peggy Hoyt from Boston University for the transcript, with measurements of temporal structures, of the narrative by an elderly New England school teacher which I analyze and compare with those of the young black child. I am also indebted to both for discussion of ideas relevant to this paper. Comments from Dell Hymes on a paper of mine that discusses some of the same data as this one, though in different terms, have been very helpful in the formulation of some of the ideas in this paper. In part, I follow an approach he first suggested to me. Of course, none of the above necessarily agrees with what I have to say here, or with the use I have made of their data or suggestions. Stories by the child studied here, or similar sorts of stories by other children, have been discussed in Cazden, Michaels, & Tabors (1985); Collins (1985); Collins & Michaels (1986); Gee (1985); Michaels (1981; 1985); Michaels & Cazden (in press); Michaels & Collins (1984); Michaels & Cook-Gumperz (1979). These papers discuss in some depth the educational relevance of the sort of story construction discussed here. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to James Paul Gee, Applied Psycholinguistics Program, Boston University, 605 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215.
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Black, & Lehnert, 1985; Rumelhart, 1975, 1977; Schank & Abelson, 1978; Schank & Wilensky, 1978; Scollon & Scollon, 1979, 1981; Stein & Glenn, 1979; Thorndyke, 1977; van Dijk, 1972, 1980; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; Wilensky, 1982, 1983a, 1983b). However, though much of this work is quite suggestive, there is, as of yet, little empirical evidence for any of these proposed structures (however, for one approach, see Gee & Grosjean, 1984; Gee & Kegl, 1983). There are several sources of information about discourse structures that psycholinguists have not paid much attention to. This is probably because this information has tended to come from anthropologists or anthropologically oriented linguists. One such source of information is the use of various sorts of discourse markers in a variety of languages across the world (Hinds, 1979; Hopper, 1979; Longacre, 1979, 1983). English is particularly impoverished in discourse particles and other formal discourse markers, but some other languages are rich in them. It is, of course, an open question as to what extent these markings reflect underlying processes in the actual production of the discourse. A second source of information are the oral "performances" found in so-called "oral cultures," that is, cultures that are relatively uninfluenced by written language and the speaking practices that are concomitant with written language (Goody, 1977, 1982; Havelock, 1963; Lord, 1960; Ong, 1982; Pattison, 1982). Such performances, oral narratives for instance, appear to wear a good deal of their discourse structure on their sleeve, so to speak. They have been shown to use a variety of prosodic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse markers to delineate structures at a variety of levels beyond the sentence, in fact, the sentence as such may not be a unit at all in these performances (Bauman & Sherzer, 1974; Bright, 1981, 1982; Finnegan, 1967, 1977; Hymes, 1977, 1981; Scollon & Scollon, 1979, 1981; Sherzer, 1983; Tedlock, 1978, 1983). Again, it is an open question as to what extent these devices indicate units actually constructed on-line in the production of the discourse, or to what extent they can tell us about everyday, less formal sorts of speech. Such performances are sometimes, though not always, memorized or, at least, constructed out of traditional subparts or formulae. Nonetheless, it is possible that such performances overtly mark discourse-level units that are not as clearly marked or as rigidly defined, in more causal everyday speech, but which exist there nonetheless. A third source of information is oral language in general, when it is least under the control of written language norms, whether this is the speech of residually oral cultures (Ong, 1982), the speech of children (Sutton-Smith, 1980), or the speech of anyone caught up in the oral mode. Such language tends to have rich prosodic and temporal markers of structure, much of which is tied to discourse, not the syntax of the sentence (Chafe, 1979, 1980, 1982; Heath, 1983; Labov, 1972; Ochs, 1979; Tannen, 1982, 1984a, 1984b). These three sources of information immediately bring up the question of the extent to which discourse-level structures will vary across cultures and Ian-
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guages, and to what extent they will show uniformity (Heath, 1983; Kintsch & Greene, 1978; Scollon & Scollon, 1979, 1981, 1984; Scribner, 1979;Scribner& Cole, 1981; Tannen, 1980, 1984c). Surely the level of discourse is the level of language at which we expect a great deal of influence of cultural variation. At the same time, it seems hardly likely that there isn't a great deal in common with the production of language in context across cultures, given that the same human brain, with its processing strengths and limitations-, is producing this language in all cases. Spontaneous oral language, in any culture, bears some overt markers of its structure. For instance, there is ample evidence that the longer pauses in a discourse will be at the ends of clauses or clause-like units, with yet longer pauses at the ends of independent sentences or sentence-like units (Cooper & Paccia-Cooper, 1980; Gee & Grosjean, 1983; Goldman-Eisler, 1961, 1968, 1972;). Indeed, this is one way one can find such units in the case of languages which are not written. In fact, there is now some evidence that the longest pauses of a text correlate well with important discourse breaks in the text (Gee & Grosjean, 1984; Gee & Kegl, 1983; Scollon & Scollon, 1981). For example, major transitions or breaks in the plot of a story tend to have longer pauses than more minor transitions or breaks. If this is indeed true, we can use pausing as evidence of larger units in the construction of a text or, put another way, as evidence of major discourse-level transitions or boundaries in the text. In this paper I will look at the oral language of a young black girl (7 years old) telling sharing-time narratives at school (Michaels, 1981; Michaels & Collins, 1984; Michaels & Cook-Gumperz, 1979). As a child, and as a child from a culture that still retains rich connections with an oral-culture heritage (Abrahams, 1964, 1970, 1976; Heath, 1983; Jackson, 1974;Labov, 1972), her speech is rich in markings of discourse structures. From the surface markers in her narrative I will try to induce the structures that seem to underlie and shape its production. It will turn out that, though her performance is spontaneous and in no sense memorized, it bears a great deal of similarity to performances in strictly "oral cultures." Of course, this will, at best, tell us directly about only the units that appear to be operative in the language of (part of) one particular cultural group. But it will raise the question of how these units might show up in the language of other sorts of speakers. To begin to consider these questions, I will close with a brief consideration of the speech of an elderly, middle-class white woman (a retired school teacher). In the analyses that follow, I will refer to the little girl as "Leona" ( " L , " for short). Two of her sharing-time narratives are given in the Appendix. Each one is reprinted twice. In Cakes-1 and Puppy-1, I have given the narratives in pretty much the form they were spoken; in Cakes-2 and Puppy-2,1 have given them in a somewhat "cleaned up" version that reflects what I take to be some of their underlying structure. Cakes-3 and Puppy-3 are diagrammatic representations of this structure. Before we start, it is important to raise the question: How can we
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argue for the presence of underlying structures in the production of a text from the surface performance of that text? We cannot, in fact, offer demonstrative evidence. All we can do is appeal to various sources of evidence and show that they converge on the same analysis. We will borrow techniques from literary analysis (stylistic analysis: Chatman, 1978; Cluysenaar, 1975; Jakobson, 1960, 1978, 1980; Jakobson & Pomorska, 1983; Widdowson, 1975); anthropological approaches to oral narratives (Hymes, 1981; Sherzer, 1983; Tedlock, 1983); and linguistic discourse analysis (Brown & Yule, 1983; Stubbs, 1983), together with prosodic analysis (Bennett, 1981; Gumperz, 1982; Gee & Grosjean, 1983; Gee & Kegl, 1983; see also Selkirk, 1984), to construct a set of hypotheses about the discourse-level units that appear to lie behind the production of the text. Of course, once having a set of hypotheses about what units emerge, we can devise experimental tests for them, as well as look for other sorts of markers in other languages or dialects for the same structures. There is a characteristic prosodic pattern in L's style that can serve as an initial cue into the structures behind her narrative performance. Her speech appears to be made up of a series of relatively short sequences of words, each sequence having a single, continuous intonational contour. Most of these sequences end on a nonfalling pitch glide, often also with some other indication of juncture (e.g., a brief pause or hesitation or lengthening of the final syllable). After several of these sequences, we finally get a sequence that ends on a falling contour. In the texts (Cakes-1 and Puppy-1) I have numbered these sequences and placed each on a separate line. Sequences that end on a falling contour have the symbol " / / " at the end of the line. In middle-class, more or less literate speech, falling contours (roughly speaking) mark the ends of sentences. This is clearly not the case in L's speech, however. For example, the opening of Puppy1 is 17 sequences long before it gets to a falling contour, and this material does not constitute a sentence under any syntactic description (even correcting for hesitations and false starts). This is, in general, true in both texts. In fact, the falling contours in L's speech have discourse-level functions, not syntactic ones. (These functions are not fully understood at this pointwe will discuss the issue below, see Michaels, 1981; Michaels & Collins, 1984, for a fuller description of the prosody of these sorts of texts.) The numbered sequences in the text look a great deal like what Chafe (1980) has called "idea units" (see also Halliday, 1967; Grimes, 1975; Kroll, 1977). For Chafe, an idea unit is a single focus of consciousness. The vast majority of these idea units are a single clause, with one piece of new infromation towards the end of the clause, information that bears the pitch glide (for more information on the relationship between pitch glides and focus, see Bolinger, 1972; Brazil & Coulthard, 1980; Ladd, 1980; Selkirk, 1984). It is only when the subject of the clause, or an adverbial element, is new information that it constitutes an idea unit by itself. Some examples: (1) today it's Friday the 13th
PRODUCTION OF NARRATIVE DISCOURSE (2) an' my grandmother's birthday is on bad luck day (3) an' . . . my mother my mother my mother's bakin' a cake (4) we bof went over my mother's house
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(5) last night my grandmother snuck out
(6) last yesterday my father in the morning (7) my puppy he always be following me
Once the agent or an adverbial element is introduced as an idea unit, it can then be incorporated as old information in the following idea unit(s). Once this happens, idea units tend to be clauses with an old or given agent, and with new information at or towards the end of the clause. (Kreckel, 1981, gets a similar result in face-to-face interaction, using a quite different methodology.) This is, of course, a very typical and unmarked discourse pattern in English (and across languages, see Givon, 1979a, 1979b). Thus, it appears that L is aiming at a series of short clauses as her ideal idea units. Furthermore, each of these clauses is marked by an opening "and" (or some other conjunction, though "and" is the overwhelming favorite; in addition, verbs of saying can count as openers, too). If we remove obvious false starts and repairs from the text and collapse the few subject nouns or noun phases that are idea units by themselves into the clauses they belong to, we get an ideal realization of the text, which is given in Cakes-2 and Puppy-2. Each of the idea units in this ideal text I will refer to as a "line." I call them "lines" because it seems that their most salient properties (discussed below) have little to do with their being clauses per se. In fact, for other sorts of speakers (or in other genres) they could be somewhat shorter or somewhat longer than they are for L, and they need not always be clauses (see the text by an elderly school teacher in Christmas-1 in the Appendix, discussed below, for example). Nonetheless, both Halliday and Chafe have argued that the unmarked idea unit is a clause. I also use the terminology of "lines" because I wish to make contact with the literature on oral narrative in oral cultures (Bauman & Sherzer, 1974; Bright, 1981, 1982; Hymes, 1981; Sherzer, 1983; Tedlock, 1983). Such narratives often transparently have a structure in terms of lines, much like the lines in poetry, which are not always clauses (though here, again, they often are). Before delineating the properties of these lines, let me
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point out that idealizing these texts by omitting false starts and hesitations, as well as collapsing subjects back into their clauses, does not mean that we are ignoring these phenomena or saying that they are mere "performance phenomena" and of no relevance. In fact, we can appeal to these phenomena as evidence for higher order structure. We will point out below that an increase in false starts, hesitations, and nonclausal idea units coincides with major boundaries in the narrative. That is, when L has finished a major segment of the narrative and must move on to (plan) the next one she displays these sorts of phenomena, perhaps because of cognitive load at these points or because her attention is shifting from content back to audience (or both). Therefore, whereas such phenomena are meaningful, they are meaningful at a higher level than the line. Lines have several related structural properties, properties that we can indeed
use as criteria for the identification of lines. These properties are: (1) Lines are relatively short.
(2) Lines start with "and" (or some other conjunction or a verb of saying). (3) Lines have one pitch glide that terminates the line. (4) Lines often terminate with some sort of junctural phenomenahesitation, syllable final lengthening, a short pause, and so forth.
(5) Lines tend to be simple clauses. (6) Lines display a good deal of syntactic and semantic parallelism with the lines adjacent or near to them.
Notice, then, that lines tend to be marked at the beginning ("and") and at the end (the pitch glide and junctural phenomena) and in terms of their internal structure (syntax and parallelism). Because lines are characterized by prosodic, syntactic, semantic, and discourse properties, there is converging evidence for line structure in a text. For L's texts, it is the parallelism between lines that is the most helpful feature in identifying lines, just as it is in biblical poetry and in the narratives of many oral cultures. And it is the syntactic/semantic parallelism across lines that alerts us to another unit in L's performance, a unit that appears to be the next larger one after the line. L tends to group her lines into series of lines that have parallel structure and match each other either in content or topic. Furthermore, prosodically, these lines sound as if they go together, by tending to be said with the same rate and with little hesitation between the lines. I will call these units "stanzas." They are very often four lines long, though they are sometimes two lines long. Occasionally, a single line seems to function as a stanza by itself. But in no case does L appear to use a three-line stanza. Stanzas show intricate structure and patterning, taking on some of the properties of stanzas in poetry. Let's look at some examples.
PRODUCTION OF NARRATIVE DISCOURSE an' an' an' my my mother's bakin a cake I went up my grandmother's house while my mother's bakin' a cake my mother was bakin' a cheese cake grandmother was bakin' a whipped cream cup cakes
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Notice that every line here ends with " c a k e . " Further, the stanza has an abab structure: the first and third line involve mother baking a cake, and the second and fourth lines involve grandmother. But they also have an aabb structure: the second line ends by repeating the first, the third and fourth are (grand)mother baking a specific type of cake. Thus, the lines are fully saturated with pattern and are tightly knit together. That this parallelism is really part of the production process is shown by the speech error in the fourth line. Each of the first three lines has ended on " a X c a k e , " and L ends the fourth line this way despite the plural " c a k e s . " It is as if she is operating with slots that are to be filled in ways partially determined by what has come before. Let's take another example: (9) an' an' an' an' we bof went over my mother's house then my grandmother had made a chocolate cake then we went over my aunt's house she had made a cake
This stanza has a clear abab structure: lines one and three are " w e . . . went over my X ' s house," whereas in lines two and four, someone "had made a c a k e " . Notice, too, the lines end "house . . . cake . . . house . . . c a k e " (abab). Another example, involving a pair of related stanzas is: (10) an' then my puppy came he was asleep he tried to get up an' he ripped my pants an' he dropped the oatmeal all over him an' my father came an' he said ''did you eat all the oatmeal?" he said "where's the bowl?" I said "I think the dog took it" "Well I think I'll have t' make another bowl" Here L introduces one stanza by the line " a n ' my puppy c a m e " and the next by " a n ' my father c a m e , " setting puppy and father into contrast. The first stanza has four actions, whereas the second has four speakings. Notice that, in the second stanza, the first two lines have " h e said" and are questions, whereas the last two lines repeat " I think," giving it something of an aabb structure. (11) an' he followed me all the way to the bus stop an' I hadda go all the way back
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GEE (by that time it was seven-thirty) an' then he kept followin' me back and forth an' I hadda keep comin' back
Here L interjects the line "by that time it was seven-thirty" into the middle of what appears to be a tightly knit stanza (giving some evidence that the four-line stanzas are really made up of subunits of two lines each). This interjection serves a dramatic purpose in the storynoting how late it is getting and thus how much deeper into trouble L is getting. The stanza has a clear abab structure: Lines 1 and 3 involve "followin'" and lines 2 and 4 involve having to go back. But the stanza is also aabb: The first two lines are simple past tense, the last two lines are in the iteractive aspect ("keep" doing something). I do not argue that all stanzas are so transparently patterned as these. Rather, I argue that these transparently patterned stanzas give us the clue we need to identify stanzas as operative in the production of the text. We can then go on to identify stanzas that are not so transparently patterned. For example: (12) an' an' an' an' I went t'the bakery with her my grandmother ate cup cakes an' she finally got sick on today she was growling like a dog cause she ate so many cakes//
These lines are clearly set off in the text. They are preceded by a series of nonnarrative statements, the first line of the stanza constitutes a change of location in the story, and the stanza ends on a falling-pitch contour. The stanza is followed by a concluding couplet that parallels the opening of the story. Thus, we can be reasonably sure the four lines belong together. One line leads to another in the stanza by simple relations of cause and effect. We do not get much overt patterning, though the first two lines are about the bakery and the last two about the sickness. Nonetheless, we can clearly identify a four-line unit here. It is interesting to note, too, how at the third line L has two " a n ' s . " Once again, it seems that there is a bigger juncture between the second and third lines in a stanza than between either the first and second or the third and fourth, that is, that the stanza is made up of two two-line units. Sometimes in these stories, two stanzas that occur next to each other seem to form a unit together. In these cases the second stanza basically repeats the content of the first or it furthers the narrative line in only a very small way. I will call these two-stanza units, for want of a better word, "strophes." Let me give one example here; I print the stanzas, which are adjacent to each other in the text, side by side here: (13) last night my grandmother snuck out an' she ate all the cake an' we hadda make more an' an' an' an' we was sleepin' she went in the room gobbled em up we hadda bake a whole bunch more//
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The first stanza starts with a temporal adverb because we have moved to a new part of the narrative (the preceding part is under the aegis of "today" and ended with a falling contour). This is matched by the line "an' we was sleepin' " in the next stanza, which again suggests nighttime. Grandmother sneaking out in line two of the first stanza is directly matched by grandmother going into the kitchen in the second. Grandmother eating all the cake in line three of the first stanza is matched in the corresponding line of the second stanza by grandmother gobbling the cakes all up. Finally, "we hadda make more" is matched by "we hadda bake a whole bunch more." Notice, once again, that though neither of these stanzas separately displays much internal parallelism, the relationships between the two stanzas gives us clear evidence that each is a four-line unit (because they match each other nearly perfectly, line for line). The strophe ends on a falling contour, and the following lines clearly do not pattern with these, as they constitute an acting out of the grandmother's delight. Thus, these two stanzas are isolated for us as a clear structure with its own integrity. We may note, also, that in oral narratives across various oral cultures it is not uncommon to see a retardation of the narrative line caused by repetition and redundancy (see Sherzer, 1983, but also Scollon & Scollon, 1984). Such repetition perhaps aids production by slowing down the narrative pace, but we also should not discount the aesthetic appeal such retardation seems to have for many, perhaps all, cultures (see Shklovsky, 1965; Stacy, 1977). If we consider the properties of the units we have so far identified, that is, lines and stanzas (and strophes), an overall property of L's narrative style becomes clear: Movement forward narratively is always done by holding a good bit of the structure and content constant. This suggests that it would be interesting to look at major transitions in her stories. How does L get from one place to another when she has to cross a major border, so to speak? In these cases there would be less structure or content that could be held constant, and this should raise problems for the flow of the narrative. This brings us to the unit above the level of the stanza and strophe. If we look at the content of L's narratives as wholes, they clearly fall into larger units that we could call "episodes." However, in keeping with the terminology of lines and stanzas we have adopted so far, I will refer to them as "sections." Sections are defined by a set of converging criteria: A. B. C. D. E. They tend to be large topic units, definable by one topic or theme. They involve no internal changes of place, time, or major characters. Within sections stanzas tend to fall into particular structures or patterns definable on the basis of parallelism. They tend to end on a line with a falling-pitch glide ( " / / " ) . At their opening, there tends to be a good number of hesitations, false starts, and idea units shorter than a clause.
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Talking about sections involves talking about the whole text. In the Appendix, Cakes-3 and Puppy-3 display the section structure of L's two stories. The breakdown into sections in terms of topics or themes is fairly straightforward and obvious. In turn, it is confirmed by other structural properties of the texts. In Cakes, Section 1 is about baking cakes, Section 2 is about grandmother eating the cakes, and Section 3 is about the bakery. Section 1 ends on a falling contour (line 14 in Cakes-2), as does Section 3 (line 45 in Cakes-2). Section 2 begins on a temporal adverb ("last night"), and Section 3 does also ("an' now"). Section I, of course, is understood to be in the scope of the opening adverb in the opening frame ("today"). Notice, too, the patterns of hesitations and false starts. As L moves from one section to another, she displays more hesitations and false starts. Thus, note the openings of the sections in the Cakes story (and here we restore the false starts and hesitations given in Cakes-1 using them as on-line evidence for sections): (14) (opening of Section 1 in Cakes story) an' . . . my mother my mother my mother's bakin' a cake (15) (opening of Section 2 in Cakes story) an' every last ye last night (16) (opening of Section 3 in Cakes story) an' no:, now today's my grandmother's birthday an' only one . . . person . . . is a lot o'people's makin' a cake again The whole last section of Cakes has a good number of hesitations and false starts, a point we will return to later. Although intonation, adverbial openers, and hesitations can be used as guides to section structure, the section is basically defined by its consistency of topic/theme, character, and location. There is, however, further structural support for the section as a unit: Stanzas tend to pattern inside sections in neatly parallel ways. In addition, sections often end on summaries. Thus, consulting Cakes-3, note that Section 1 of Cakes is made up of a two-stanza strophe (S2 and S3) which leads to a two-line summary. Section 2 is made up of two two-stanza strophes ([S5-S6 and S7-S8] which, in turn, lead to a summary stanza [S9]). Section 3 is a bit different. It is made up of a series of nonnarrative lines (i.e., lines that are not actions or events that are part of the story, but rather comments, descriptions, and other expository devices S10, SI 1, and S12) that lead to the final denouement in stanza 13. These non-
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narrative lines preceding the conclusion of the story are linguistically rather different from the rest of the narrative part of the text, a point we will come back to. Turning to the Puppy Story (Puppy-3), we see that it has in Section 1, two two-stanza strophes. Section 2 has a two-stanza strophe that leads to a nonnarrative stanza that is reminiscent of the non-narrative part of the Cakes story (and linguistically different from its surrounding narrative text as well). The final section of the Puppy story has a two-stanza strophe that leads to the concluding couplet of the story. The Puppy story does not contain summaries, but both stories contain an intriguing non-narrative portion close to the ending of the story. Stanzas crucially "look both ways": They organize the lines of the texts, while at the same time they constitute the internal structure of the sections. They seem to be a crucial switching device that mediates between the line and the larger narrative structure of the text. We do not want to be particularly definitive about overall structure here. We are not claiming that L knows the overall structure of the text before she starts; rather, we are claiming it is emergent by a process of incremental addition that is somewhat broken or thrown into "crisis" at larger breaks in the text. The Cakes story gives us a good insight into the relationship between the story as a whole and its emergence part by part. There is a great deal of hesitation and a number of false starts and repairs in the final section of the story and in the concluding couplet. L seems to be trying both to carry the story forward and to plan its ending. She manages to construt the final narrative event and to conclude with a couplet that immediately returns us full circle to the opening frame, thereby constructing a closed and unified structure but the hesitation seems to indicate that this is partly an on-line and retroflective decision. Also relevant to the question of the relationship between the story as a whole and its on-line unfolding in real time is the fact that the two stories display similar strategies at a global level. They both open with a temporal adverb, they both have three major sections, they both have a non-narrative portion close before the ending, and they both conclude by a rapid switch to a new and different locale (the bakery, the hospital). Further, they both have themes that run like strongly colored threads throughout the entire text, especially baking and eating in Cakes, and coming and going in Puppy. These global or abstract strategies may be schemas or global templates that L does in fact have as a pregiven resource or plan in constructing the story, a resource that is used together with her strategy of incremental addition, parallelism, and retardation. Before moving on, I would like to comment on the non-narrative portions of the two texts, which are reprinted below: (17) Cakes: an' now today's my grandmother's birthday
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GEE an' a lot o'people's makin a cake again but my grandmother is goin' t'get her own cake at her bakery// an' she's gonna come out with a cake that we didn't make// cause she likes chocolate cream
(18) Puppy an' he always be followin' me when I go anywhere ' he wants to go to the store an' only he could not go to places where we could go like to the stores he could go but he have to be chained up These portions involve generic statements, stative verbs, or statements lumping many discrete events together, all of which depart from the narrative line (which involves statements of discrete events). There are several things to note about the language of these portions. First, it is more complicated syntactically than the other parts of the text. Second, it does not by any means fit as nicely the line and stanza structures we have been using (in fact, we have purposely rather forced things, here). Third, the language gets rather "meandering," as if L is delaying. I would suggest the following hypotheses: These sections come close to the end of the stories. They serve as what Labov (1972; Labov & Waletsky, 1967) has called "evaluations" (which he points out often occur before the ending in the narratives of black teenagers), giving an indication of the point of the stories and what L considers makes them "tellable." Further, they serve as transitions between the body of the story and the ending, giving L space and time to plan the endings. They, thus, serve as aids both to the listener and to the speaker. The fact that the style of the non-narrative portions is different (more complicated syntactically, less typically poetic in oral-language terms) suggests that L has two linguistic styles that she mixes in these stories. I will call one style "poetic," the other, the one found in the non-narrative portions, "prosaic." I will appeal to this same distinction when I consider briefly below the style of an elderly, white, middle-class retired school teacher. There is a great deal of similarity between the structures we have found in L's stories and those that have been found in oral narratives from oral cultures around the world. It is certainly possible to account for this by saying that L is from a "residually oral community," that is, a community that is less influenced by written-language styles than middle-class communities, and one that still retains ties to an oral tradition. But the deeper question is why these structures of lines, stanzas, and sections exist across so many diverse cultures and genres. It seems to me that the beginnings of an answer are to be found in the hypothesis that these structures reflect units of human narrative/discourse competence. Of course, they will be marked in surface performance in different ways in different
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cultures, and, here, oral cultures and cultures influenced by an oral tradition may be more perspicuous than some others. The key, then, is to abstract what is basic to these units and thus what may be universally part of the human narrative/discourse competence. As a first tentative step, let us hypothesize that the following units exist in any narrative performance: A. Idea units that converge on a unit that we have called the line. Such units are relatively short and contain one piece of new, or better, focused, information. They will often, though not always, be clauses. The language will use whatever it uses to mark focused information to mark them (e.g., pitch glides), as well as junctural phenomena such as short pauses or hesitations. Lines will cluster into thematically constant units that we have called stanzas. Stanzas will have a unitary perspective, not just in terms of larger elements like time, location, and character, but also in terms of a quite narrow topic or theme. Larger topic/thematic units that we have called sections. Sections will be defined by a unitary perspective in terms of elements like location, time, and character.
B.
C.
The amount of structural parallelism across lines and stanzas will be culturally specific, though the phenomena itself is quite pervasive across cultures. Where it exists, it will be a crucial marker of line and stanza structure. Where it doesn't exist, we may be tempted to believe that the above units do not exist, as they will somewhat hidden. In fact, I will suggest a distinction between "poetic" narrative performance and "prosaic" narrative performance in terms of this (and related) features. Narratives that mark out these units with structural parallelism, I will refer to as "poetic"; those that do not, I will refer to as "prosaic." L's narrative is obviously "poetic." Prosaic narratives have the same underlying units, but they do not mark them in the same way. The stanza is, in many ways, the crucial unit. It mediates between the single focus of the line and the extended topical organization of the section. In more prosaic narratives, the term "paragraph" may be more appropriate, though stanzas are rarely liable to get as long in speech as paragraphs can in writing. In order to suggest some of the ways we might discover line and stanza structures in prosaic narratives, let me look briefly at a performance that is quite different, on the surface, from L's. This is a short narrative by an elderly, retired New England school teacher. Oral narratives from elderly persons are interesting for our purpose, because at least some elderly people tend to pause somewhat more and somewhat longer than younger subjects (Sabin, Clemmer, O'Connell, & Kowal, 1979; but see Gordon, Hutchinson, & Allen, 1976, as well). I assume that any pause in a text is relevant to meaning and structure (at least until proven
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otherwise). This is not an assumption always made in psycholinguistics but, interestingly enough, it is one made by some students of oral-culture discourse (especially Tedlock, see Tedlock, 1977, 1978, 1983). Furthermore, there is some psycholinguistic evidence that the pauses in a text pattern somewhat hierarchically: The smallest ones occur between phrases (perhaps, phonologically, rather than syntactically defined), longer ones occur at clause and sentence boundaries (or boundaries of units that converge in the unmarked case on clauses and sentences), and the longest occur at the major episodic or thematic boundaries in the narrative (Butterworth & Goldman-Eisler, 1979; Gee & Grosjean, 1984; Goldman-Eisler, 1961, 1968, 1972). In any case, pauses can be used to arrive at hypotheses about structure, though these hypotheses obviously have to be considered in light of other independent evidence. In Christmas-1 in the Appendix, I have given the text of the retired teacher, indicating all the pauses in the text and giving their values in terms of milliseconds. For the most part, there is, between any two pauses, one concept or idea, where concept or idea here basically amounts to one piece of substantive, information-bearing, lexicalized information, information that is usually "new" in the discourse. Below, I indicate how this works, pointing out how certain information is old, given the context, and italicizing the new ideas (in cases where it is obvious that, and how, the unit between pauses has one piece of new, lexicalized/substantive information, I just annotate the line with "[obvious]" consult the Appendix, Christmas-1): 1. Probably 2. the funniest 3. was 4. was when I was first teaching in New Hampshire [the speaker knows that the listener knows that she was a teacher in New Hampshire, so the new information here is when it happened] 5. there were many 6. interesting but 7. funny happenings ["happenings" is a vacuous noun] 8. I think one of the most interesting [The rest of the material here carries no real information] 9. I taught in Woodstock ["I taught" is given in (4) above] 10.-13. [obvious] 14. eight grades in all with two teachers [exceptional in having at least two pieces of new information] 15.-24. [obvious] 25. [exceptional] 26. [obvious] 27. and they had pushed an old-fashioned sleigh ["they had pushed" is already implicated by "sleigh" and so is redundant]
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28.-29. [obvious] 30. get in it with all our presents ["get in it" is already implicated by the context] 31.-33. [obvious] 34. school that morning [no new information] This is a good example of a text where the "idea units" are not clausal. We saw that L had a strategy of chunking out short, nonclausal idea units only at the beginning of an episode, where the information was being introduced for the first time. Thereafter, this information, often referring to an agent, was prosodically reduced and made part of an idea unit that was a clause long. The teacher puts a lot of emphasis on lexical and syntactic resources. Her lexical and syntactic resources are more complex than those of L, and thus we get many more small idea units, where L would have had single clauses with a pronominal subject and new information in the predicate. This difference in style is due to three factors: (a) The teacher is an adultL is only in the first grade; (b) middle-class, literate speakers tend to put more emphasis on syntax and the lexicon to communicate a message, whereas speakers more influenced by oral traditions put more emphasis on prosody and discourse connections to carry the message; and (c) elderly speakers tend to have more elaborated syntax than younger speakers, even younger adults (Obler, 1981; Obler & Albert, 1977; Smith, 1955). How deep is the difference between the teacher and L? In fact, I would argue that it is not as large as one might at first think. It is also the case that the teacher's idea units converge on ("approximate") lines, lines that are, by and large, clausal. But we can see this only if we look at at the teacher's text in terms of three layers or levels of pauses. I would argue that, in the text, which I take to be only one episode or section long, idea units are separated by short pauses, that lines are separated by middle-sized pauses, and that stanzas are separated by the longest pauses in the text. To get at this structure, let's set some arbitrary values and see what happens. I will define a small pause in this text as a pause less than 600 ms, a middle-sized pause is one 600 ms or greater, and a long pause is one 1000 ms (1 s) or longer. Below, I have written out the text again, numbering each line (i.e., each segment ending in a pause 600 ms or greater), and leaving spaces between each stanza (i.e., each unit ending on a pause of 1000 ms or greater). Of course, we have no guarantee that these values are the right ones; all we can hope is that they are close enough that, for the most part, the right units emerge. What we see emerge are lines that are rather clause/sentence-like. The teacher does not give equal focus to all her idea units. Rather, a line combines several idea units with one of them being focused. The focused idea unit carries foregrounded information, information that is important to the flow of the story. This focused idea unit carries the main pitch glide in the line. In the printing of the text below I have tried to indicate (by comments in brackets) how certain of the information in a line is given, old, or less focused, because it has already been implicated or
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suggested in some way in a previous part of the text. In the case of both the teacher and L, the speakers integrate their idea units into lines that are clause/sentencelike and that have one piece of salient information together with information that is given, redundant, or less foregrounded. We might say, however, that L's given information tends to be more given and redundant, and thus more prosodically reduced, than the teacher's. This is, in fact, just the discourse side of the teacher's greater syntactic and lexical elaboration. There is, however, no very deep difference between the two. They both have idea units that converge on lines. Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 19:02 01 November 2013 1. Probably the funniest was when I was first teaching in New Hampshire (.670 ms) ["funniest" was in the question the teacher was asked] 2. There were many interesting [happenings] but (.770 ms) 3. funny happenings (.660 ms) 4. I think one of the most interesting (.600 ms) 5. I taught in Woodstock my first year (.810 ms) ["first year" is implicated in (1) already] 6. and uh had a group of childrenthere were eight grades in all with two teachers (1.150 ms) [this appears to be a side comment] 7. 8. 9. and on Christmas, on the day before Christmas (.770 ms) at that time you could celebrate Christmas with presents and trees and so on (.680 ms) ["celebrating Christmas" is already implicated in (7)] and the other teacher and I lived about a mile from the school (1.546 ms) ["other teacher and I " is partially given in (6)]
10. and about (.760 ms) 11. an hour before school began we heard a lot of children (.980 ms) [the foregrounded information is "hearing lots of children"] 12. shouting and so on and they had pushed an old-fashioned sleigh (.950 ms) [the shouting is implicated already in (13)] 13. to our house (1.180 ms) 14. and had us get in it with all our presents and pushed us (.760 ms) 15. to school that morning The presence of lines in the text seems to be clear, then. It can hardly be an accident that abstracting segments that are separated by pauses 600 ms or longer yield units that are so clausal. If this value was truly random, it should lead to a random assortment of units from a linguistic point of view. But what about stanzas? L used semantic and structural parallelism to demarcate the stanza structure of her text. But the teacher does not appear to. This could indicate that
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she does not have an intermediate unit between the line and the section (here, the whole text). On the other hand, it could just be that the teacher does not mark her stanzas as overtly as L does. I will hypothesize that the units demarcated by the largest pauses in the text (1000 ms or longer), which are separated by spaces here, are the teacher's stanzas. Unfortunately, at first sight, there does not appear to be any evidence for this. These units do not even appear to be narrowly constrained to one specific topic/theme, as we would expect stanzas to be. Nonetheless, I believe that they can be shown to be quite narrowly constrained, and, furthermore, that they are organized by a type of semantic/structural parallelism. Each stanza mentions, and is organized around, (a) a time, (b) a place, and (c) a topic/theme. In fact, the first line of the first stanza mentions a theme, a time, and a location. The rest of the first stanza goes on to once again mention a theme, a time, and a location. Each of the subsequent stanzas mentions one theme, time, and location. In Figure 1, I lay out this structure, treating the first line of the text as an introduction to the story as a whole. I display not only the particular theme, time, and location mentioned in each stanza, but also the order in which they are given in each stanza. In the first stanza, the first line states a general time, location, and theme.
INTRODUCTION (line 1) Theme funniest happening STANZA 1 Theme interesting, but funny happenings STANZA 2 Time the day before Christmas STANZA 3 Time an hour before school Theme shouting & pushing oldfashioned sleigh Location to our house Theme celebration Location a mile from school Location in Woodstock Time my first year Time when first teaching Location in New Hampshire
STANZA 4 Theme pushed us with all our presents in the sleigh Location to school Time that morning
FIG. 1. A diagrammatic representation of the stanza structure of the teacher's text. Note that S1 S4 and S2 = S3.
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Then the rest of the stanza repeats the theme, giving a more specific time and location. The first stanza ends on some nonnarrative, expository information. Notice that there is a great deal of patterning in how the information is laid out across the stanzas. Both the introductory line and the remainder of the first stanza start with the theme. The second and third stanzas, the two internal ones, have identical structures. The theme is placed between the time and the location. The concluding fourth stanza returns to the order of the first stanza (theme, location, time). Furthermore, notice that across the first three stanzas, the theme, time, and location each narrow down, getting more and more specific, going from the general to the specific, step by step: Theme: funniest happeninginteresting but funny happeningscelebrationshouting and pushing sleigh; time: when first teachingmy first yearthe day before Christmasan hour before school; location: New HampshireWoodstocka mile from schoolour house. Thus, it looks as if these elementstheme, time, and locationare the hinges around which the teacher organizes her stanzas. Interestingly enough, then, although she does not have the overt parallelism that L has, she does use a form of parallelism to organize stanzas. Further, the parallelism involves the mention of a single time, location, and theme, giving almost the definitional content elements of a stanza. The entire piece (one section long, I would argue) is given coherence by having each stanza exemplify these elements at progressively more specific levels, until the final summing up in the last stanza. It is interesting to note, too, that the teacher uses the same strategy L does for closurethe final stanza moves us to a new location (away from home to school). The point, then, is that there is a great deal of pattern to be found in the teacher's stanzas. Thus, there perhaps is reality to a unit that is intermediate in size between the sentence and the section or episode (here, the text as a whole). Further, although there seem to be many differences between the style of the teacher and that of L, at a deeper level they appear to be operating with the same sorts of principles. Their superficial differences have the quality of the difference between poetry and prose. L uses a great deal of parallelism, a device traditionally associated with poetry across many cultures. Of course, it is a matter of degree; the teacher has parallelism too, it is just less transparent. In this paper I have tried something of a new approach to the discovery of units of planning in discourse, though aspects of the approach are fairly traditional by now in ethnographic work on oral discourse. I have tried to use converging evidence from prosody, pausing, structural and semantic parallelism, and stylistic analysis to argue for a series of hypotheses about units that appear to organize the construction of discourse. At the lowest level, idea units converge on lines, units that are often, but not always, clausal, and which contain one piece of new or foregrounded information. At the highest level, the text is organized around sections that are like, the acts of a play. In between, and
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crucially mediating between the two levels, are stanzas, clusters of lines that are narrowly constrained in structure and topic. It is with stanzas that discourse takes its most definitive step beyond syntax. L's text suggests the possibility that stanzas may sometimes cluster into strophes, while it also suggests that there may be certain subsection structure to sections. 1 have further suggested that differences between styles may be located in the superficial ways of marking these units, rather than in the deeper principles of their existence and construction. We may want to make a distinction between more poetic and more prosaic types of oral discourse (a continuum), even for discourse that is not "poetry" in the technical sense. Finally, I am suggesting that there is a level at which the discourse of children like L is not so much different from middle-class, "hyperliterate" speech as it is all the more transparent to what humans may have in common in the construction of sense in discourse. This hypothesis is, of course, not proven, but I think it is nonetheless worthy of consideration and serious attention, even if it does go against a current trend towards dichotomizing and stressing differences in this domain. Appendix: Cakes-1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. Uh today is . . . thir . . . it's Friday the 13th an' it's BREATH bad luck day an' my grandmother's birthday is on bad luck day an' . . . my mother my mother my mother's bakin' a cake // an' I went up my grandmother's house while my mother 's bakin a cake// an' my mother's was bakin' a chee:se cake my grandmother was bakin'a whipped cream cup cakes an' my we bof went over my mother's house . . . an then my grandmother had made a chocolate cake an' then we went over my aunt's house an' she had made a cake an' everybody had made a cake for nana so we came out with six cakes //
410 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. an' every last ye last night m'my grandmother snuck ou:t an' she ate all the cakes an' we hadda make mo:re
GEE
she knew w' we was makin' cakes an' she an' we was sleepin' an' she went in the room an' gobbled em up // an' we hadda bake a who:le bunch more //
34. she said mmmm 35. she had all chocolate on her face 36. cream 37. strawberries CLASS: GIGGLES 38. she said mmmm CLASS: mmmm 39. =that was good CLASS: that was good 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. an' then an' then my gran' (each) all came out an' my grandmother had ate all of it// she said what's this cheese cake doin' here she didn't like cheese cakes an' she told everybody that she didn't like cheese cakes// an' . . we had a:ll an' then she then she an' we kept makin' cakes an' she kept eatin' em an' an' last night an' we finally got tired of makin' 'e cakes an' so/ an' so we a:ll ate 'em// SOUNDS FINAL an' no:, now today's my grandmother's birthday an' only one . . person . . is a lot o'people's makin' a cake again but my grandmother . . is . . goin . . . t' . . . get her own cake at her bakery//
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60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.
. . . an' she's gonna come out with a cake that we didn't make// cause she likes chocolate cream// an' I went t' the bakery with her an' we had an' we an' my grandmother ate cup cakes an' an' she finally got sick on on today// an' she started she was growrling like a dog cause she ate she ate so many cakes// an' that's why t' I told her an' I finally told her today was ApApril . . . it was . . . I finally told her that it was . . . it was Friday the thirteenth bad luck day//
Appendix: Cakes-2 Frame 1. 2. 3. 4. Part 5. 6. 7. 8. Today it's Friday the 13th an' its bad luck day an' my grandmother's birthday is on bad luck day// 1 an' my mother's bakin a cake an' I went up my grandmother's house while my mother's bakin' a cake// an' my mother was bakin' a cheese cake my grandmother was bakin a whipped cream cup cakes we bof went over my mother's house then my grandmother had made a chocolate cake then we went over my aunt's house she had make a cake
9. an' 10. an' 11. an' 12. an'
412 13. 14. Part 15. 16. 17. 18. (she 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.
GEE an' everybody had made a cake for nana so we came out with six cakes// 2 last night my grandmother snuck out an' she ate all the cake an' we hadda make more knew we was makin' cakes) an' we was sleepin' an' she went in the room an' gobbled em up // an' we hadda bake a whole bunch more // she said mmmm she had all chocolate on her face/ cream/ strawberries/ she said mmmm that was good an' then an' then all came out an' my grandmother had ate all of it// she said "what's this cheese cake doin' here"she didn't like cheese cakes an' she told everybody that she didn't like cheese cakes// an' an' an' an' we kept makin' cakes she kept eatin' 'em we finnally got tired of makin' cakes so we all ate 'em
Part 3 Nonnarrative section (35-41) 35. an' now 36. today's my grandmother's birthday 37. an' a lot o'people's makin' a cake again 38. but my grandmother is goin t'get her own cake at her bakery// 39. an' she's gonna come out with a cake 40. that we didn't make// 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. cause she likes chocolate cream an' an' an' an' I went t'the bakery with her my grandmother ate cup cakes an' she finally got sick on today she was growling like a dog cause she ate so many cakes//
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Frame 46. an' I finally told her that it was 47. it was Friday the thirteenth bad luck day// Appendix: Cakes-3 The Cakes Story Frame: Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 19:02 01 November 2013 Bad Luck Day: STANZA 1 (four lines, non-narrative)
Part 1: Baking Cakes a. b. STANZA 1 (four lines) # STANZA 2 (four lines) STANZA 4 (two lines) Summary
Part 2: Grandmother Eats the Cakes a. b. c. STANZA 5 (four lines) # STANZA 6 (four lines) STANZA 7 (four lines) # STANZA 8 (four lines) STANZA 9 (four lines) Summary
Part 3: Grandmother and the Bakery a. b. Non-Narrative Section: STANZAS 10, 11, 12 Final Episode: STANZA 13 (four lines)
Frame/moral: Bad Luck Day: STANZA 14 (two lines, non-narrative) Appendix: Puppy-1
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.
L:a:st last yesterday when
uh
m' my fa.ther in the morning an' he there was a ho:ok on the top o' the stairway an' my father was pickin' me up an' I got stuck on the hook up there an' I hadn't had breakfast
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15. he wouldn't take me down = 16. until I finished a:ll my breakfast = 17. cause I didn't like oatmeal either // 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 19:02 01 November 2013 24. 25. 26.. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. an' then my puppy came he was asleep an' he washe was he tried to get up an' he ripped my pa:nts an' he dropped the oatmeal 'all over hi:m an' an' my father came an' he said "did you eat all the oatmeal" he said "where's the bo:wl" // he said "I think the do I said "I think the dog . . . took it" // "well I think I'll have t' make another can" // an' so I didn't leave till seven an' I took the bus an' my puppy he always be following . me he said uh my father said um "heyou can't go // an' he followed me all the way to the bus stop an' I hadda go all the way back by that time it was seven thirty// an' then he kept followin' me back and forth = an' I hadda keep comin' back // an' he always be followin' me = when I go anywhere he wants to go to the store an' only he could not go t' plaxes whe:re we could go like
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55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 19:02 01 November 2013 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.
to: like t' the stores he could go = but he have t' be chained up an' an' an' an' we took him to the emergency see what was wro:ng with him he got a sho:t then he was cry:in'
an' . . . la last yesterda:y an' now they put him asleep an' he's still in 'e ho:spital an' the doctor said that he hasta he got a shot because he: he was he was ne:rvous about my home that I had an' he an' he could still stay but he thought he wasn't gonna be a he thought he wasn't gonna be able t' let him go: // Appendix: Puppy-2
Part 1: Home Part JA: Opening SceneBreakfast 1. Last yesterday in the morning 2. there was a hook on the top of the stairway 3. an' my father was pickin' me up 4. an I got stuck on the hook up there 5. 6. 7. 8. an' I hadn't had breakfast he wouldn't take me down = until I finished all my breakfast = cause I didn't like oatmeal either //
416 Part IB: The Puppy and the Father
GEE
9. an' then my puppy came 10. she was asleep 11. he tried to get up 12. an' he ripped my pants 13. an' he dropped the oatmeal all over him 14. an' my father came 15. an he said "did you eat all the oatmeal?" 16. he said "where's the bowl?" // 17. I said "I think the dog took it" // 18. "Well I think I'll have t'make another bowl" // Part 2: School Part 2A: Going to School 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 26. 27. an' an' an' my so I didn't leave till seven I took the bus my puppy he always be following me father said "heyou can't go" //
an' he followed me all the way to the bus stop an' I hadda go all the way back (25. by that time it was seven thirty) // an' then he kept followin' me back and forth = an' I hadda keep comin' back //
Part 2B: Non-narrative Section 28. 29. 30. 31. an' he always be followin' me = when I go anywhere he wants to go to the store an' only he could not go to places where we could go like to the stores he could go = but he have to be chained up
Part 3: Hospital Part 3A: The Hospital 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. an' an' an' an' we took him to he emergency see what was wrong with him he got a shot then he was crying
an' last yesterday, an' now they put him asleep an' he's still in the hospital (an' the doctor said . . .) he got a shot because he was nervous about my home that I had
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Part 3B: Ending 41. 42. an' he could still stay but he thought he wasn't gonna be able to let him go// Appendix: Puppy-3 The Puppy Story Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 19:02 01 November 2013 Part 1: At Home a. b. Part 1A: Opening SceneBreakfast STANZA 1 (four lines) # STANZA 2 (four lines) Part IB: The Puppy and the Father STANZA 3 (four lines) # STANZA 4 (four lines)
Part 2: Going Places a. b. Part 2A Going to School STANZA 5 (four lines) # STANZA 6 (four lines) Part 2B: Non-narrative Section STANZA 7 (four lines)
Part 3: At the Hospital a. b. Part 3A: The Hospital STANZA 8 (four lines) # STANZA 9 (four lines) Part 3B: The Ending STANZA 10 (two lines) Appendix: Chirstmas-1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Probably (.280 ms) the funniest (.140 ms) was (.250ms) was when I was first teaching in New Hampshire (.670 ms) there were many (.480 ms) interesting but (.770 ms) funny happenings (.660 ms) I think one of the most interesting (.600 ms) I taught in Woodstock (.100 ms) my first year (.810 ms) and uh had a (.390 ms) group of children (.490 ms)
418 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.
GEE there were (.330 ms) eight grades in all with two teachers (1.150 ms) and on Christmas (.210 ms) on the day before Christmas (.770 ms) at that time (.470 ms) you could celebrate Christmas with (.130 ms) presents and trees and so on (.680 ms) and (.510 ms) the other teacher (.300 ms) and I lived about a mile (.350 ms) from the school (1.540 ms) and about (.760 ms) an hour before school began we heard a lot of children (.980 ms) shouting and so on (.540 ms) and they pushed an old fashioned sleigh (.950 ms) to our house (1.180 ms) and had us (.120 ms) get in with all our presents (.290 ms) and pushed (.160 ms) us (.760 ms) to (.100 ms) school that morning.
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DISCOURSE PROCESSES 9, 391-422 (1986)

Units in the Production of Narrative Discourse

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PRODUCTION OF NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

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(5) last night my grandmother snuck out

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9. an' 10. an' 11. an' 12. an'

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

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416 Part IB: The Puppy and the Father

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