Expressing implicit figure-ground character information from explicit literary text information

Abstract

Co-creation treats implicit information as equally important as explicit information. If sentences in literary text are considered as explicit information, the figure-ground characteristics of story characters perceived in our minds can be considered as implicit information. Such figure-ground information may not be evident from only reading the text. By constructing rough set derived lattices from the explicit literary text, such implicit figure-ground contrast can be expressed through the complement relations of elements in the lattice. We applied this method to observe the implicit figure-ground information of two stories, one to a detective mystery that provides unique alibi to characters most of the time and the other to a play where multiple characters appear in the same scene and are involved in the same activities; many attributes overlap. The figure-ground information results differently in these two stories. The sampled detective story often has a clear figure-ground property for its characters. However, the theater play has fewer scenes of clear figure-ground property.