A Review of Story Grammars

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the studies on the narrative discourse. First, it will describe the historical background and the eventual emergence of the story grammar or story schema. Particular attention will be given to the models of story grammar developed by cognitive psychologists. The story grammar which was originally proposed by Rumelhart (1975) and its subsequent revisions will be reviewed by pointing out some of the critical drawbacks in these schemata. Secondly, studies on children's narratives in the framework of the story grammar will be reviewed with an attempt at finding out the implications of the story grammar for the children's comprehension and production of stories. Thirdly, some suggestions for the use of story grammars in the study of children's story production and some possible ways of revising the models of story grammar which are currently employed by psychologists will be made.