Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

En réponse à william drewery :


>  From what I understand, Biblical Hebrew, especially
>in the Pentateuch, uses similar "thematic" devices. I
>think (I could easily be wrong) that a topic-comment
>structure is found in many polysynthetic languages. I
>know that many of them have very grammaticalized
>notions of "focus". Is that the same thing?
AFAIK, topic and focus are different things. The topic is what the sentence 
is about, and is often omitted if it has already been introduced. The focus 
is the most important part of the sentence, i.e. what the sentence has to 
say, and by definition cannot be omitted. But people are often confused 
because those words are close synonyms in "normal" language, and even 
linguists sometimes confuse them :) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.