Twos and Fore: Dual Organization and the Importance of Foreshadowing in Prai Story Structure

Abstract

This study examines two Prai folk tales through the lens of universal story grammar. Since the 1970’s, schema theory has been invaluable in explaining how information in narratives is encoded, processed, and retrieved. Story grammar further defined how narratives are stored by proposing a hierarchical organizational framework. This paper critically examines claims about the universality of story grammar. Analysis for this study took into account significant pragmatic features (repetition, pauses, and rate of speech) that indicate episode boundaries and important transitions. Overlapping features reveal that Prai narrative texts differ from previous studies in several important ways. The stories show that information is organized according to a binary structure. In addition, story grammar rules do not adequately describe the importance of foreshadowing to the comprehension of Prai folk stories, nor do they account for how endings are often de-emphasized.