Tagabawa bagobo folk narratives structures

Abstract

The beauty of a narrative lies on its structure and its syntactic contents. However, only a few researches are available that analyzes narrative structures of folk narratives. This study seeks to analyze, compare and contrast the narrative structures of the folk narratives of the Tagabawa Bagobo, one of the indigenous peoples found in the Southern Philippines. It uses qualitative research method, specifically descriptive research design. It is anchored on the theory of narratology proposed by French-Bulgarian literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov. Ten folk narratives of the Tagabawa Bagobo are used in this study. Out of the 10 folk narratives used the researcher found out that all the folk narratives contain narrative units. These narrative units are considered the minimal elements consisting story and a narrative. These minimal units are the nouns, verbs and adjectives. These act as agents, predicates which may be static or dynamic attributes which are categorized as states, or qualities or conditions. The folk narratives consist of propositions. Propositions consist of (a) something which is named or talked about (known as the argument, or entity) (b) an assertion or predicate which is made about the argument. In other words, a proposition is a verbal unit that consists of a subject and a predicate. The propositions form the five stages of narrative as suggested by Todorov which starts from the Equilibrium and ends with a restoration. These stages are similar to the common plot structure which starts with the exposition and ends with a resolution.