Character as Nominal: A Sketch for a Theory

Abstract

The idea that the sentence is a prototype or model for plot is not new, but what seems to be the obvious consequence of that idea-namely, that there must be some kind of correspondence between the nominals in a sentence and the characters in a plot-seems to have received little or no attention. That is the subject I want to consider in the following pages, examining the resemblance between character and nominal as a lexical item, as a syntactical (actually structural) unit, and as a rhetorical device.'