Evolving Lattices for Analyzing Behavioral Dynamics of Characters in Literary Text

Abstract

This paper is about an application of rough set derived lattices in order to analyze the dynamics of literary text. Due to the double approximation nature of rough set theory, a pseudo-closure obtained from two different equivalence relations allows us to form arbitrary lattices. Moreover, such double approximations with different equivalence relations permit us to obtain lattice fixed points based on two interpretations. The two interpretations used for literary text analysis are subjects and their attributes. The attributes chosen for this application are verbs. The progression of a story is defined by the sequence of verbs (or event occurrences). By fixing a window size and sliding the window down the story steps, we obtain a lattice representing the relationship between subjects and their attributes within that window frame. The resulting lattice provides information such as complementarity (lattice complement existence rate) and distributivity (lattice complement possession rate). These measurements depend on the overlap and the lack of overlap among the attributes of characters. As the story develops and new character and attributes are provided as the source of lattices, one can observe its evolution. In fact, a dramatic change in the behavior dynamics in a scene is reflected in the particular shifts in the character-attribute relationship. This method lets us quantify the developments of character behavioral dynamics in a story.