Structural Analysis of Foreshadowings and Punchlines of Shinichi Hoshi's Flash Fictions

Abstract

To automatically generate a story with a surprise, previous studies have attempted to clarify the relationship between the structure of the punchline and the development of the story. However, the relationship between the punchline and the foreshadowing may also play an important role in providing the surprise. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between foreshadowing and punchline in a genre of Shinichi Hoshi's flash fictions. First, we categorized punchlines and foreshadowing based on the KJ method and created a category table. Next, based on the category table, we created vectors of punchline and foreshadowing that co-occurred in each work. As a result of factor analysis of the obtained vectors, three types of patterns were obtained. By using this result, it is considered possible to construct a system that automatically generates a story with an appropriate punchline and foreshadowing.