Re: topic/focus or theme/rheme

At 05:39 PM 2/20/99 +0000, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>At 5:21 pm -0500 19/2/99, John Cowan wrote:
>>Raimundus A. Brown scripsit:
>>
>>> But then I read elsewhere: "topicalization takes place when a=
 constituent
>>> is moved to the front of a sentence, so that it functions as a topic."
>>
>>That works only for languages where the topic *is* at the front of
>>the sentence, like Chinese and some kinds of English.  Nobody writing
>>about Japanese topicalization would say such a thing!
>
>Yes, indeed, it'd only make sense if the topic were always placed there.
>As the topic is certainly not placed first in a normal Welsh sentence, then
>what I giving in Welsh cannot be examples of topicalization but must, I
>assume, be examples of 'focussing'.  But since the verb is focussed by
>placing the verbnoun first and having 'gwneud' (to do/ make) as the finite
>verb, the normal finite verb first sentence would seem to have no focus,
>thus:
>
>Fe aeth Si=F4n i'r lyfrgell.  - finite verb 'aeth' - non-focussed sentence:
>John went to the library.
>
>I'r lyfrgell aeth Si=F4n. - focus on "i'r lyfrgell" 'to the library'.
>
>Si=F4n aeth i'r lyfrgell. - focus on "Si=F4n" 'John'
>
>Mynd i'r lyfrgell wnaeth Si=F4n. - focus on "mynd" 'to go' - John *went* to
>the library.
>
>Is this right? Or am I way off beam?
This sounds right to me.  I gather that the most common focus position,
cross-linguistically, is immediately before the finite verb.  (That is, for
languages that _have_ a focus position -- as opposed to those like English
that rely mostly on intonation and context to mark focus, or resort to
clefting in situations where explicit focus-marking is really needed.)  From
your examples, Welsh seems to fit neatly into this pattern.  However, for VO
languages, this creates a conflict of sorts, because the immediate
pre-verbal position is also usually the sentence-initial position, which is
by far the most common position for the _topic_ (hence the prevalence of SVO
word order, since the topic more often than not is the subject).  So, if
there's one constituent before the verb, how do you tell whether it's the
topic or the focus?  One solution is to move the topic out of
sentence-initial position, giving VSO order (as in Welsh) or VOS (as,
arguably, in Malagasy).  Another is to use different forms of the verb,
depending on whether the preceding constituent is a topic or a focus.  I
think some African languages do that (although I can't remember a specific
example); so does Matt Pearson's Tokana.

(Actually, one of the things I find interesting and esthetically appealing
about Welsh is the way it "compromises" between VSO and SVO in some tenses,
by splitting the verb into an auxiliary and a non-finite lexical verb and
putting the subject between them, so that it's technically verb-initial, but
still has the subject before the lexical verb.  This is a very neat
resolution to the topic-initial vs. focus-initial problem: it puts the topic
before any non-focal lexical material, while still leaving the immediate
pre-verbal position open for the focus.  One thing I'd like to do someday in
some future conlang project is to extend that idea to all
tenses/moods/aspects and to non-subject topics.)

>I guess the German feature, however, of keeping the finite verb as second
>idea (I'm not referring, of course, to subordinate clauses) and moving the
>subject behind the verb if some other constituent (e.g. direct object,
>adverb, adverbial phrase) is put first is topicalization.  This would
>explain why the verb itself cannot be fronted, unless to ask a question.
>
>I do find some of the literature on this somewhat confusing (or even
>contradictory) and am trying to sort of the two different concepts of
>topic/ comment and of focus.  Is the rheme/ theme concept essentially the
>same as topic/ comment?
R.L. Trask, in _A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics_, states
flatly that "theme" and "rheme" are synonymous with "topic" and "comment",
respectively.  But I know that some of Trask's definitions are not
universally accepted.  (I once inadvertently triggered a flame war by
quoting Trask on center-embedding.)

>
>Ray.
>
-------------------------------------------------
Tim Smith
timsmith@global2000.net

The human mind is inherently fallible.  It sees patterns where there is only
random clustering, overestimates and underestimates odds depending on
emotional need, ignores obvious facts that contradict already established
conclusions.  Hopes and fears become detailed memories.  And absolutely
correct conclusions are drawn from completely inadequate evidence.
        - Alexander Jablokov, _Deepdrive_ (Avon Books, 1998, p. 269)