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Page 27
and isotopy (as denounced by the same etymological root); nevertheless, there is a difference between the two concepts for at least two reasons. The topic as question governs the semantic disclosures, that is, the selection of the semantic properties that can or must be taken into account during the reading of a given text; as such, topics are means to produce isotopies. Since the relevant semantic categories (upon which to establish an isotopy) are not necessarily manifested, the topic as question is an abductive schema that helps the reader to decide which semantic properties have to be actualized, whereas isotopies are the actual textual verification of that tentative hypothesis. 15
Thus the abduction of the textual topic helps the reader to select the right frames, to reduce them to a manageable format, to blow up and to narcotize given semantic properties of the lexemes to be amalgamated, and to establish the isotopy according to which he decides to interpret the linear text manifestation so as to actualize the discoursive structure of a text. But there is a hierarchy of isotopies, and we shall find that this category also works at the next level.
0.7. Narrative Structures
0.7.1. From Plot to Fabula
0.7.1.1.
Once he has actualized the discursive level, the reader knows what 'happens' in a given text. He is now able to summarize it, therefore reaching a series of levels of abstraction by expressing one or more macropropositions (see van Dijk, 1975).
In order to understand this progressive abstractive process, let us retain an old opposition, still valid as a first approach to the question: the difference proposed by Russian formalists between fabula (story) and sjuzet (plot or discourse).16
The fabula is the basic story stuff, the logic of actions or the syntax of characters, the time-oriented course of events. It need not necessarily be a sequence of human actions (physical or not), but can also concern a temporal transformation of ideas or a series of events concerning inanimate objects.
The plot is the story as actually told, along with all its deviations, digressions, flashbacks, and the whole of the verbal devices.
According to these definitions the plot should correspond to the discursive structure. One may also consider the plot as a first tentative synthesis made by the reader once all the operations of actualization of the discursive structures are accomplished. Perhaps, in this more restricted sense, in this first synthesis of the actualized intensions, some lexical elements as well as minor or (apparently) irrelevant microsequences get dropped out. Let us suppose that certain sentences can also

 
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