 Pavel began his scholarly career as a contributor to structuralism and semiotics, two movements that experimented with linguistic techniques in the study of literature.His books "La Syntaxe narrative des tragédies de Corneille" (1976) and "The Poetics of Plot" (1985), sketched out a transformational grammar of literary plots inspired by Noam Chomsky's linguistics.A story or a play, he argued, is not a mere succession of pre-established moves, but involves the passage from an initial problem (a transgression or a lack) to a series of successful or unsuccessful solutions.