Narrative Structures in Burmese Folk Tales By Soe Marlar Lwin

realisation which may be included or interspersed with lexicogrammatical realisation of some other elements. The raised dot * between elements refers to their reversibility, while the carat sign indicates relative fixity. Square brackets indicate that the two elements can precede one another, and curved arrow symbolises the possibility of iteration for that element. Hasan (1996) used the GSP framework in examining the structure of nursery tales in order to display their common entities, and to put forth a better definition of a nursery tale among other categories of narratives. The recognition of optionality in her study, both for the elements and for their order vis-à-vis each other, builds in the possibility of variation in the structure of the texture of a narrative.

Conversely, Hoey (2001) proposed another way of understanding narrative structure, which is in terms of narrative matrices. A narrative matrix is formed with participants in the horizontal parameter, and time bands in the vertical parameter. Any telling of a happening is seen as tracing a path through the matrix. Distinguishing the structure of a happening from the structure of a telling of that happening, his study illustrates matrix analyses of some narrative texts such as Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Aesop stories. Time-sequence-oriented narrative matrices are observed by answering the iterative question ‘What happened next?’ which is usually interspersed with questions relating to the description of the scene or the thoughts of the characters (Hoey, 2001). Hasan's (1996) and Hoey's (2001) studies discussed the techniques that authors take in their varying manner of presentation of the basic story.

Alternatively, in their study of personal narratives, Ochs and Capps (2001) discussed the differences between telling a story to another and telling a story with another. Comparing the plot structures of literary and oral narratives, they pointed out that in