Re: THEORY: Information Structure; Topic/Comment, Focus/Background, Given/New.

Tom wrote:
>"Topic", also, I meant in the strictly non-technical sense, of "what the
>text is about".  The sentence "Your name is Jonathan" is about your name.
My difficulty is in distinguishing this use of 'about' from the
given/new axis. Can given information occur other than within
the topic, and can information be new when it is a topic?
Of course a topic is new in the sentence where it is first
introduced into the discourse - but can it be a topic *in that
sentence*?

best,
Jonathan.

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