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

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@H...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Henrik, that's very helpful.
>
> The 2003 post you cite distinguishes very clearly between focus,
emphasis
> and topic,
> although it doesn't actually mention the given/new distinction.
Perhaps I've
> been confusing
> two concepts of newness:
>
> (1) a new referent, a concept not previously active in the
discourse; and
> (2) new information, a link between two concepts which is new to
the
> listener (i.e. the new
>      application of a predicate to a subject). Typically at least
one of
> these concepts is
>      not new(1).
>
> So, when you said:
>
> >If it's information that is newly introduced, it's not the topic.
Of
> >course, one must define 'new' correctly: 'new' does not
mean 'first
> >mentioned in the conversion'.
>
> ... you were using new(2), and I think you are right in saying
this. There
> remains however
> the question of whether a topic(alised referent) can be new(1). My
suspicion
> is that the
> answer to this question is also 'no'.
>
> A topic must of course always be introduced somehow, in English
often using
> the phrase 'You
> know X? Well,...'. Often the speaker is perfectly well aware that
the
> listener 'knows' X,
> and the phrase is used simply to introduce a new topic into the
discourse.
> If X is analysed
> as the topic in this context, it would constitute a counterexample
to my
> conjecture; I
> would find it difficult to argue that any other part of the
sentence ('you',
> for example)
> should be analysed as the topic. Maybe this construction is simply
> topicless.
>
> Hmmm.
>
> ObConlang...
>
> Henrik wrote:
> >a) What's your name?        My name is Jonathan.
> >b) Who's name is Jonathan?  My name is Jonathan.
> >In the answer in a), 'my name' is the topic.  In b), 'Jonathan'
> >is the topic.
>
> T4 would say (in very schematic paraphrase):
> a) name-belonging-to-me Jonathan.
> b) person-having-name-which-is-Jonathan me.
>
> ...with a zero copula in each case. The way I think of this is:
> (1) T4 tries to get as much of the 'given' information as possible
into the
> first half of
>      the sentence.
> (2) The assertion of the existence of the referent of each half
should not
> itself convey
>      new information [in sense (2)] to the listener.
>
> Thus, (a) entails 'There is a name belonging to me.' = I have a
name.' and
> 'Jonathan
> exists.', and (b) entails 'There is at least one person called
Jonathan.'
> and 'I exist.'
> Each of these sentences must be unsurprising to the listener (to
the best of
> the speaker's
> knowledge) for the whole utterances (a) and (b) to be pragmatically
> appropriate.
>
> Jonathan.
>
Hi, Henrik and Jonathan.

I was definitely not using "focus" the way the 2003 post in Conlang
to which Henrik referred was using it;
I was using it in the way(s) Thomas E. Payne's "Describing
Morphosyntax" and Anna Siewierska's "Person" used it.
So that post's "emphasis" was one type of the "focus" as I was using
it; diathesis was not.

For my purpose, "focus", as a facet of "information structure", was
particularly about picking out "the most important part" of the
utterance.

If we think of a clause as a scene, and the way we choose to word it
as the cinematography or photography, then I think diathesis
corresponds better to the camera-angle than to the focus.

Focus is more about what's in the foreground vs what's in the
background.

As for new(1) and new(2), I think I did state in my original post on
this thread that "new" meant "new, or new relative to the discourse,
or new relative to the 'given'".  So, imo, that would cover both
new(1) and new(2).

----

The list accepted a post from me today, so maybe it will accept this
one too.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey have many clauses in which the sea is
mentioned, sometimes as a core term, and sometimes as an oblique
adjunct.
The sea itself, when it is mentioned, is sometimes topical and
sometimes part of the comment; sometimes it is given information and
sometimes it is new information; and sometimes it is
foregrounded 'focused' information and sometimes it is backgrounded
information.
However, Homer almost never fails to mention, whenever he mentions
the sea, at least two of the following facts about it;
* the sea is wine-dark
* the sea is salty
* the sea is wet.
None of these facts is ever new; none of them is ever topical; none
of them is ever focal.  They are always given, background, and
comment.

-----

Tom H.C. in MI