Re: topic/focus or theme/rheme

At 11:04 AM 2/22/99 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
>Raimundus A. Brown scripsit:
>
>> Yes, indeed.  Breton seems to have this problem.  The Welsh order "Si=F4n
>> aeth i'r lyfrgell", which is the colloquial form of the literary "Si=F4n=
 a
>> aeth i'r lyfrgell" ([It is] John who went to the library - the relative
>> pronoun "a" usually being omitted in speech), has become the normal
>> 'unfocussed' form:
>
>This has also become the rule in the Gascon variety of Occitan,
>but with the relative pronoun preserved:
>
>        Lo men frair que 't voler'e parlar.
>        (the) my brother who to-you wishes to-talk
>        My brother would like to talk to you.
>
>The presence of "que" or its emphatic relatives "be" and "ja"
>(< BENE, IAM) is mandatory in every affirmative main clause or sentence
>complement.  So speaking historically, Gascon has no sentences,
>only topics with attached relative clauses!
Fascinating!  So it sounds like the focus-initial word order of Welsh is
derived from a cleft construction, rather than just moving the focus to the
front with no change to the underlying "deep structure".  I seem to remember
Matt Pearson saying that, in his opinion, _all_ focus-marking structures are
ultimately derived from cleft structures.  And I just read in William
Croft's _Typology and Universals_ that it's very common cross-linguistically
for a language to use something very similar to its relative clause
structure for marking focus.  (In English, clefting is the _only_ structural
means of focus-marking, as opposed to just using intonation.  And of course
a cleft structure basically just turns the entire sentence, except for the
focus, into a relative clause.  According to Crofts -- and it seems to make
sense to me -- the functional logic behind this is that a relative clause is
usually background, and what focusing does is to foreground the focus and
background the rest of the sentence: a clear case of iconicity, using
similar structures to serve similar functions.)

So it would appear that what happened in Breton and Gascon is that a cleft
structure developed for focus marking and then somehow lost its focusing
function while retaining its form.  (Whereas in spoken Welsh it lost its
form but retained its function!)

-------------------------------------------------
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)