Re: Topics and foci/focuses... Wow, now I get it!!!

At 11:53 pm -0400 5/5/01, Amanda Babcock wrote:
[snip]
>
>So, is "focus" the opposite of "topic"?
No.

The opposite of 'topic' is 'comment'.  The topic of a sentence is the
entity (person, thing, concept etc) about which something is being
said/written; what is said/written about the topic is the comment.

An alternative terminology is 'theme' & 'rheme'; the 'theme' being the
topic we are talking about and, therefore, carrying the lowest level of
'communicative dynamism', and the 'rheme' being the new information we are
imparting about the topic and, therefore, carries the highest level of
communicative dynamism.


'focus' refers to the special prominence (i.e. focus) given to the most
important new information which is being imparted.  Not all sentences,
then, will have focus; we merely add comment to the topic.  The focus will
be that part of the comment we wish to highlight. ,

>Perhaps "like" and "just" in
>English are focus markers.
Oskar's examples suggested they marked topics.  Focus is usually marked by
stress, tho cleft constructions can be used, e.g.
John mowed the grass _yesterday_. [Yeah, I know it looks kind of long, but
he did]
It was yesterday John mowed the grass.

Fronting is not uncommonly used to mark a topic, if the topic is not the
subject, cf.
Yesterday John mowed the grass.  [You wanted to know what he was doing
yesterday]

We could focus on part of comment, e.g.
Yesterday _John_ mowed the grass.  [not Pete, or Susan]
Yesterday John _mowed_ the grass. [Yeah, I know he's a lazy so-and-so, but
he actually mowed it]

>Russian marks topic/focus using word order, BTW.  Since the word order
>is pretty free otherwise,
Just like Latin - topics to the front, foci to the end.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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