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

Hi!

Jonathan writes:
> 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*?
I think it can't.  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 can start with
'Hi! My name is Jonathan' and still, 'my name' is not new information.
However, 'Jonathan' would be new information, here.

Closely analysing Japanese sentences helps to understand how exactly
topics work, because it is explicitly morphologically marked.  Also,
German also has a strict notion of topic that is very similar to that
of Japanese.  It is not morphologically marked, but syntactically and
with (lack of) emphasis.

E.g. distinguish:

   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.

He's another older post about the distinction of focus, emphasis,
and topic:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0312B&L=conlang&D=0&P=40579

**Henrik