Narrative Position

A frame-relative position in a narrative — the narrative analogue of SpatialCoordinates. Carries its frame (mandatory: a position without a frame is the bare-integer anti-pattern this class exists to forbid), an ordinal (chapter_index 31), a label ('Thirty-Three', 'the Longest Night'), or both. Ranges are expressed as paired positions. Comparison, ordering, and discourse↔story reconciliation are solver-layer computations (Principle 12).

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:Entity, gufo:Object

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:NarrativePosition as a specialized kind of gmeow:Entity, gufo:Object. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Flashback

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: a flashback IS a disagreement between two time frames (,
# , P9). Narrative time has two co-equal axes, neither the truth of the other:
# DISCOURSE time (syuzhet — the order of telling, owned by the telling work) and
# STORY time (fabula — the order of happening, owned by a continuity). Each is a
# gmeow:NarrativeTimeFrame (a ReferenceFrame). The same diegetic event carries a
# gmeow:NarrativePosition in EACH frame; when its discourse ordinal and story
# ordinal disagree, that disagreement is precisely the flashback — made queryable
# rather than contradictory. Here the protagonist's birth happens first in the
# story (ordinal 0) but is told only in chapter 5 (discourse ordinal 5).
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/narrative/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

# Told late: chapter 5 (discourse ordinal 5).
ex:posTold a gmeow:NarrativePosition ;
    gmeow:positionFrame   ex:discourseFrame ;
    gmeow:positionOrdinal "5"^^xsd:integer ;
    gmeow:positionLabel   "Chapter 5 (flashback)" .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:Entity