Re: topic/focus or theme/rheme

At 6:49 pm -0500 15/2/99, Tim Smith wrote:
=2E.....
>I agree, and I realize now that my definitions were unclear.  I
>inadvertently gave the impression that the opposition is between "topic" an=
d
>"focus", when in fact (according to my understanding of the terms, which
>seems to basically agree with yours) there are two oppositions: "topic" vs.
>"comment" and "focus" vs. something for which there doesn't seem to be any
>generally accepted term (but your term "presupposition" seems as good as
>any).  (I've also heard the term "ground" used for this.)
Nice to know basically agree :)

>Part of the confusion arises from the fact that in some sentences, the topi=
c
>is identical with the presupposition and the focus is identical with the
>comment, while in other sentences (or sometimes even in the same sentence i=
n
>a different context) the focus is a subset of the comment and the
>presupposition is a superset of the topic.  For instance, "John went to the
>library" can be understood in at least two ways, depending on the context.
Yes, indeed, and according to emphasis & intonation (and the latter varies
quite a bit in different regional forms of Brit.English just to add to
confusion).

>If it's an answer to the question, "What did John do?", the division into
>topic and comment and the division into presupposition and focus are the sa=
me:
>
>| ---- topic --- | ---- comment ---- |
>  John            went to the library
>| presupposition | ----- focus ----- |
>
>But if the same sentence is an answer to the question, "Where did John go?"
>(where it's understood that John went somewhere), then the two oppositions
>divide the sentence differently:
>
>| topic | ------- comment ------- |
>  John     went    to the library
>| presupposition | --- focus ---- |
Interesting. I'm just wondering how this'd work out in a language with a
different word order from English, e.g. the normally, unemphatic word order
would be:
=46e   aeth Si=F4n  i'r   lyfrgell.
AFF. went John to the library   ['Fe' is a affirmative preverbal particle]


I guess that'd correspond to the first English sentence above.

The second sentence would certainly be:
I'r lyfrgell aeth Si=F4n.
To the library went John.

Clearly "i'r lyfrgell" is certainly the focus and is brought to the front,
replacing the affirmative particle, while "aeth Si=F4n" is the presuppositio=
n.


But we can also have:
Si=F4n aeth i'r lyfrgell =3D *John* went to the library.

That'd answer the question "Who went to the library?"   Here also it is
clear that "Si=F4n" is the focus and "aeth i'r lyfrgell" is the
presupposition.

We can also have:
Mynd   i'r   lyfrgell wnaeth Si=F4n
Going to the library   did   John   ['mynd' is the verbnoun, obj. of "did"]

=3D John *went* to the library.
Here "mynd" and, arguably, "mynd i'r lyfrgell" is the focus, while
certainly "wnaeth Si=F4n" is presupposition - we know John did something.

But what is the 'topic' and 'comment' in these sentences.  The first,
normal, unemphasized sentence does not seem to me to divide so neatly as
the English.  Is "Si=F4n" the topic and "Fe aeth .... i'r lyfrgell" the
comment.

It certainly feels awkward.  In any case the subject very oftem come 'in
the middle' of the verb in Welsh, cf.
mae Si=F4n yn mynd - is John YN going =3D John is going
mae Si=F4n wedi mynd - is John after goinf =3D John has gone

(YN is a particle prefixing the predicate of "to be" in certain contexts, cf=
=2E
mae Si=F4n yn fachgen =3D John is a boy; mae Si=F4n yn ddiog =3D John is laz=
y.)

Indeed, looking at the Welsh sentences I'd say that the first sentence was
'unfocussed', i.e. it's normal with no 'close-ups' on anything.  But the
other sentences bring an unusual part of the sentence to the front and thus
"focus" it.  The 'topic-comment' distinction seems less useful here.

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."
Are the 2nd, 3rd & 4th Welsh sentences examples of topicalization?   Does
that mean the first sentence has no topic?

I be interested to hear your comments and, indeed, that of other conlaners.

>To further complicate matters, most writers use the term "focus" only in th=
e
>second situation, where the new information is only a subset of the comment=
,
>and refer (implicitly or explicitly) to sentences in which the entire
>comment is new information as having "no focus".
Yep - that does seem what a language like Welsh presents.  I think there is
logic in that usage.

>Some people (including, I
>must confess, myself) vacillate between these two definitions, using
>whichever one seems most convenient in a given context.
I most of us vacillate over some of our terminology :)

>Most of the time,
>the second definition is more immediately useful when describing grammars,
>and this is the sense in which I was using the term in my query to Kristian=
=2E
>But either way, it's distinct from "rheme", which, as I understand it, is a=
t
>least roughly synonymous with "comment", as "theme" is with "comment".
So I've read - but I've also seen it stated that "rheme" has 'the highest
degree of communicative dynamism' and 'expresses the largest amount of
extra meaning'.  If this is so, then the focussed parts of the 2nd, 3rd &
4th Welsh sentences would also seem to be 'rhemes'.  But does that then
make the first Welsh sentence 'rhemeless' ('arrhematic'?)?

Indeed, one of my problems with the rheme-theme terminology is
'contamination' with Greek 'rhema' and 'thema'.  The latter gives us the
ordinary English word "theme". The words 'theme' is pretty ordinary and in
many contexts means much the same as 'topic'.  While the word "rheme" I
assume is derived from ancient Greel 'rhe^ma' which, like Latin 'uerbum',
had the general meaning "word" but as a technical term meant VERB.  Thus
theme/rheme sound to me like 'noun-phrase/ verb-phrase' which is much like
the 'classical' subject/predicate distinction.

I wonder what 'rhematists' make of the Welsh sentences.

>
>At any rate, I apologize for adding to the confusion over this
>already-confusing terminology.
Not at all - you've set off some interesting trains of thought in my mind,
at least :)

Ray.