Event progression in Gooniyandi texts

The purpose of this paper is to explore the way in which the sequence of referent events underlying the story is expressed in narrative texts in Gooniyandi (Kimberley, Western Australia). It is shown that narratives are structured in at least two partially independent ways: in terms of story units, which constitute minimal stories (Prince, 1973)_t and in terms of Complication^Peripetia Denouement. Despite the perhaps universality of these properties, there remain problems of interpretation for non-Aborigines resulting in part from differences in the types of event that constitute acceptable realizations of these functions in the different cultures.