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

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@Y...>
wrote:
>   -----
>
>   [Kinds of Focus]
>
>   Thomas E. Payne, in "Describing Morphosyntax", lists several
different kinds of focus; unfortunately, I have not memorized them
yet.
>   I do remember that one kind was what he called "Truth Value
Focus"; this was the type of focus in which the speaker's main thrust
was to emphasize that his entire sentence was, indeed, true.
>
>   Siewierska, OTOH, only describes four kinds of Focus, though to
be sure neither she nor Payne claims to have exhausted them.
>
>   She says Focus can be either contrastive or non-contrastive.
>
>   Contrastive Focus can either contrast within the utterance or not.
>
>   Utterance-Internal, Explicit Contrast:
>   "Feed the cat the fish; feed the rabbit the lettuce."
>
>   Utterance-External, Implicit Contrast:
>   "Two U.S. Presidents have been impeached."
>
>   Non-contrastive focus can either be a "wh"-question word, or the
answer to a "wh"-question.
>
>   "Who was the first U.S. President to be impeached?"
>
>   "Andrew Johnson was the first U.S. President to be impeached."
By the way, the "answer-to-a-wh-question" is the closest match between
"focus" and "new".  In some ways, if part of a sentence can be seen
as an answer to a "wh-"question, even if there was no explicit
"wh-"question asked, that part of the sentence may reasonably be seen
as both the "focus" and as the "new information".

>
>   -----
Payne's "Describing Morphosyntax", on pp. 266-270, talks
about "focus", which has been used in several different ways.  One
particular way, the way I have been using it in this thread, is for
the "pragmatically marked focus"; it is something that not
necessarily every clause has.  He says some authors, among
them "Chafe 1976, Givon 1979", use the term "contrast" to describe
this pragmatic functions.

He talks about the "scope of focus"
If the "scope of focus" is the entire clause, that is "Truth Value
Focus" abbreviated TVF, also called "polar focus".

Example.
(in response to "he didn't eat the apple"):
"Yes, he DID eat it."

If the "scope of focus" is a particular constituent, that is one of
possibly many kinds of "Constituent Focus", abbreviated CF.

Among the sorts of CF are:

Assertive focus;
Speaker believes Addressee has no knowledge of information
"They brought me a bowl of /this thick, green, mushy stuff/."

Counter-Presuppositional focus
also called "Exclusive focus"
"Sally and Robert came over last night; but SHE got drunk."
(Presupposition:  You would have thought it would have been Robert
that would get drunk, but he stayed sober.)

Exhaustive Listing focus
The information which the Speaker asserts is unique, in that the rest
of the clause is true only of it, and false with respect to any other
possibilities.
"I drank /only Pepsi/ at the party."
(I did not drink any rum or vodka.)

I don't think Payne thinks that's all there are; in fact, he mentions
the African language Aghem as having all of these and a few more.
I think he only thinks those were the ones that were common in the
literature by the time he wrote his book.

Tom H.C. in MI