The system of narrative modalities
Let ussummarize how far from Doležel’s table we are.
Any elementaryplot motive is produced, within the possible world of the narrative, by thequantification Q in the modality Mod,
,
where Q belongs to either triplet of ‹1,1› type quantifiers (T) or square of ‹1, 1, 1› type quantifiers (S),while Mod is one of the following modalities: alethic, deontic,axiologic, epistemic, and spatiotemporal: QMod = TMod
Thetriplet of ‹1, 1› type quantifiers is formed by the square omitting the innernegation. Thus, it consists from the quantifiers some, none(external negation), any (dual).
Thetriplet of ‹1, 1, 1› type quantifiers is formed by the whole square. Thus, itconsists from the quantifiers more than (strong preference), no more than(inversed weak preference = external negation of the strong preference), lessthan (inversed strong preference = internal negation of the strongpreference), no less than (weak preference = dual of the strongpreference).
Thissystem of the narrative modalities can be explicated in the table (representingthe square of more than by the first member only):
Quantifiers | Alethic | Deontic | Axiological | Epistemic | Spatiotemporal |
some | possible | permitted | good | known | somewhere |
none | impossible | prohibited | bad | unknown | nowhere |
any | necessary | obligatory | indifferent | believed | anywhere |
more than | more possible | preferred to | preferred to | preferred to | closer than |
Two notesto the table above:
The meaning of “preferred to” in the threecases in the bottom row of the table is different. The difference betweendeontic and axiological preferences is well-known and described in thetextbooks. The notion of the epistemic preference was introduced by NicholasRescher as is described above (sect. 7): it deals with the fact that someinformation is more convincing than other.
The spatiotemporal operators (the last column)have both/either spatial and/or temporal value(s). Thus, they can mean “somewherein time,” etc.
