Algebraic structure of verbal narratives with dual meanings

A methodology for the study of what has been termed subliteral (sublit) meaning or reference is used here to describe the underlying structure of stories and topics found in verbal narratives. Sublit narratives are stories or topics that have a second level of referent meaning parallel to their literal meaning. A series of 13 literal stories from the protocol for a single narrative session provided the data for the present findings. The set of sublit referents partitions itself into two subsets of transformational and permutational referents, where a transformation refers to an obvious repetition of a basic concern and a permutation to a further encoded meaning. We will describe a mapping from the literal to the sublit level as well as a rule for composing two such mappings. The set of all such mappings, equipped with this mapping, is shown to form an Abelian semigroup with identity.