Structural analysis of narratives with the Coq proof assistant

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel application of Interactive Proof Assistants for studying the formal properties of Narratives, building on recent work demonstrating the suitability of Intuitionistic Linear Logic as a conceptual model. More specifically, we describe a method for modelling narrative resources and actions, together with constraints on the story endings in the form of an ILL sequent. We describe how well-formed narratives can be interpreted from cut-free proof trees of the sequent obtained using Coq. We finally describe how to reason about narratives at the structural level using Coq: by allowing one to prove 2nd order properties on the set of all the proofs generated by a sequent, Coq assists the verification of structural narrative properties traversing all possible variants of a given plot. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.