Part 5: Embedded Actions and Alternate Timelines

Previous: Declaring Actions and Properties

Since you're getting the hang of filling out forms, let's go a little faster through the modeling of this fable.

For "with a piece of cheese in her beak", go to the Opening Story Point and click New Property. There is a category for Prepositional Phrases, and inside that, a single important property that is a catch-all for such attachments: "on/around/over/etc. something". You'll see four slots that need filling:

Don't forget to highlight the Original Story span ("with a piece of cheese in her beak") before clicking the accept button.

For "when a fox observed her", let's bounce back to Story Point 1, since this is where time "begins" from the description of the a priori situation. Create a new action in which you search for "observes" and select "something observes something (detect, observe)":

Remember that when searching for actions, use the present simple tense ("observes" in this case instead of "observe" or "observed").

Now the next clause "set his wits to work to discover some way of getting the cheese," has some subordination. It also has some anthropomorphism of the fox's wits. Depending on what kind of symbolic encoding you are after, you might choose to simplify this sentence into something like "The fox thinks of how to get the cheese." In that case, you would set up an action and search for "thinks". One of the options refers to a proposition in its brief description. This is where Scheherazade's approach to modeling gets expressive. When you select an action that refers to a "proposition", you can embed a subordinate action or property inside one of its slots. In this case, select the action "something thinks some proposition":

The first prompt button is easy: Click on it and select "the fox" as the thinker.

The second one gives a dropdown which reveals number of types of embedded propositions as well as the semantics of how they should attach to the main "thinks" action:

In this case, "How to have a Property" and "How to do an Action" let you describe properties and actions, respectively, that are embedded into the slot with a "how" relationship -- exactly what we want in this case. The options that mention "a Timeline" refer to an alternate timeline: recall that we are working now in Reality time, but an alternate timeline can refer to imaginary or hypothetical events; in practice, you would want set up an alternate timeline for embedding two or more actions or properties inside a slot, since "How to have a Property" and "How to do an Action" let you set up only one apiece. More on that later.

Select "How to do an action." You'll see an inner panel for describing the embedded "how" action. 

Click the prompt button for "What How to do an Action?" and the search panel on the right will now let you find an action to embed. Search for "obtains" (for some reason, "gets" is not in our database):

Now the inner action has its own slots to fill. What was the meme again?

Actually we can go deeper, Scheherazade will let you model phrases like "he said that she said that he said that she said..." The biggest limitation you'll run into is that the user interface will run out of space to nest these panels together like a Matroyshka doll. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Go ahead and mark that the action the fox thinks about is one in which the fox is the one obtaining, and the cheese is the object obtained:

Looks good to me. Highlight the appropriate phrase in the Original Story and click to accept.

I see we have a question? Yes?

Ah, hmm, well, how would we have done that? The "wits" is available as a Quality in the Story Elements panel, so would could have sent up a noun phrase "The wits of the fox", and then done this:

That's a bit more literal. There are some missing propositions here and there in the knowledge base, but it's the closest we can get.

That's enough for Story Point 1. Note that actions that happen at the same time should be in the same Story Point, where actions that are sequential should happen in sequential Story Points. Personally, I interpret the timeline of the story as one in which the "observe" and "wits" actions happen at the same span, and then the "coming and standing" action happens afterward. Let's make a Story Point 2 for the next sentence.

Let's model the next clause, "Coming and standing under the tree," as this:

Making progress. How about another actions?

Next up is our first bit of dialog. The action "something says to something some proposition" works well here if we simplify the dialog to say "The fox says that the crow is noble." (If we want to be literal, we can set up a second character -- "a noble bird" where "noble" is assigned as an attribute -- and have the fox claim to see that instead. An attribute is a Property that can be applied directly to a noun in the Story Elements panel. But for purpose of the tutorial, let's keep moving forward.)

Note the use of "Hypothetical Property" as the method of attachment for the embedded property.

For the next sentence -- "Her beauty is without equal" -- we can bounce back to Story Elements and create the quality "the beauty of the crow" with the "quality of something (unique)" pattern.

Making progress more quickly now... (Don't forget to save.)

For the next sentence, we need to say say(fox, exquisite(hue(plumage(crow)))). "Hue" is a quality, and "plumage of the crow" a meronymous noun:

OK, so far, so good. But this next one is very complicated: "If only her voice is as sweet as her looks are fair, she ought without doubt be Queen of the Birds."

How do we do that?

Well, let's break it down. This is essentially a dialog act in which the fox gives two hypothetical events: equality between the sweetness of the voice and the fairness of the looks; and the identity of the crow as the "queen of the birds". We first need to set up all of these new nouns, and then an alternate timeline will let us model two hypothetical events with an if-ten relationship. Finally, all that can be encapsulated inside a dialog proposition. Let's get started.

First, the sweetness of the crow's voice:

Second, the fairness of the looks of the crow:

(Be sure to use the "comeliness" sense of "fairness" rather than the justice sense.)

For the "queen of the birds", we first need to encode "the birds" as the special character type "all members of a type":

It's verbalized as "every bird" rather than "the birds" to simplify the generation grammar. We then give the birds a queen via an abstract character that is a role over the birds:

Great. Now, let's get down to brass tacks. Follow me as I set up an alternate timeline. On the Timelines screen, grab this dropdown and select "New timeline..."

In the dialog box that comes up, give the alternate timeline a time (like "Fox promise") and set the parent timeline to Reality. The parent timeline should be the one that will invoke the alternate timeline. Since we plan on making this promise a dialog act in Reality, keep Reality as the parent timeline.

Click "Create new timeline" and suddenly we have switched into a new scope of time -- this one is red:

The "reconstructed story" box has also changed to an alternate mode where it only reads out the content of this alternate scope of time:

An alternate timeline has an Opening Story Point and subsequent numbered Story Points, just like the Reality timeline. There is, however, a new button here for "attachment point". Exactly one Story Point in every alternate timeline serves as the timeline's attachment point, and you can choose which point is the attachment point by pressing the "Attachment Point" button while viewing that Story Point. Think about the moment in the story when the fox makes his promise. There is a linear span of time there, with a past (before the fox speaks), the present (the moment of the fox speaking) and the future (after the fox speaks). Now, the instant the fox speaks, he describes hypothetical events. He can be describing events in the past, events in the present, or events in the future. The attachment point is what defines "the present" in the alternate timeline with respect to point where it is invoked in the Reality timeline. Let's clarify this by example:

• • If an action is modeled in Alternate Story Point 1, and the attachment point is Alternate Story Point 2, then the fox would be speaking about a past event ("I did this")

  • If an action is modeled in Alternate Story Point 2 and that is also the attachment point, then the fox would be speaking about a present event ("I do this", "I am this")

  • If an action is modeled in Alternate Story Point 2 and the attachment point is Alternate Story Point 1, then the fox would be speaking about a future event ("I will do this").

The Opening Story Point in an alternate timeline can be used to express things that simply are in this scope of time, independent of any sequence of time states. In this case, let's set up both of the two clauses in the Opening Story Point and also make that the attachment point. Fortunately, it's the default attachment point when you set up a new alternate timeline.

Now we need to set up an equality between the sweetness of the crow's voice and the fairness of the crow's looks. The fulcum of this is the equality. Click New Property and note that there is a category called "Amounts and comparisons". Open it up and choose the one called "Something is equal to something else":

You'll be able to find those complex nouns from earlier:

Accept this, but don't associate any Original Story text for now. We'll do that for the dialog act itself.

Now set up a second New Property in the Opening Story Point for the crow's identity as Queen of the Birds. Click New Property and note the "Identity" folder. Inside of that is a useful property "is another character":

Accept this one, and your Alternate Timeline should look like this:

The box with the regenerated story text shows that we're almost there -- we just need to somehow express that there is a conditional relationship between these two. Fortunately, there is a button you can use that is only available in alternate timelines. Each Property and Action has a button called "IF" -- it's just to the left of each individual property reference texts. If you click the IF button, that Property or Action becomes the hypothetical condition, and anything else in the alternate timeline becomes the consequence of that condition. In this case, we'll hit the IF for the bit about the sweetness of the voice of the crow. This pushes the "crow is the queen of every bird" bit into a conditional mode predicated on the equality bit:

Note that you can have multiple predicates on the IF side, and multiple on the THEN side, and they don't need to be in the same Story Point. An alternate timeline can discuss a hypothetical causal relationship between one event and a later event, for example.

We're almost done with this sentence! We have our if-then all set up; let's pop back to the Reality timeline and use it in a dialog act. Just use this dropdown to head back to Reality:

Once back to the Story Point with all the dialog, set up a new Action of the type "something says to something some proposition". Note that there are two by this name; VerbNet indicated a semantic distinction, which we reflect by having two different sets of possible relationships to the embedded proposition. Choose the version that offers "Asserted Timeline" as a possible kind of proposition, then for the slot that asks "What Asserted Timeline?", choose the shiny new alternate timeline ("Fox promise"). Suddenly, the whole alternate timeline appears as a subordinate clause for this dialog act:

Highlight the huge span of Original Story text that represents this encoding, and accept away!

The next sentence, "The crow was hugely flattered by this", could be easily set up as a Property concerning belief in an action:

But if we want to be more precise with our temporal referents here, we can use a second alternate timeline to represent the crow's belief that the fox has been flattering her.

Set up this action in Alternate Story Point 1:

But don't make Story Point 1 the attachment point. Make Story Point 2 the attachment point instead, so that the flattery is in the relative past.

Note the tense of the reconstruction:

Over in Reality, set up a new Property of the type "believing at timeline" (under the folder Beliefs):

Highlight the corresponding span of original text, and we there we go.

Fortunately, we don't need any more alternate timelines for this fable.

Next: Finishing the Timeline