Re: topic/focus or theme/rheme

At 08:09 PM 2/14/99 +0000, Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>At 5:29 pm +0100 14/2/99, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>....
>>
>>        I don't like the words "topic" and "focus". They are particularly
>>ambiguous for those who are not natives in English.
>
>They are not exactly precise for native English speakers, either.
>
>>I prefer more
>>"international" terms which are "theme" and "rheme". The theme is what we
>>are talking about, the rheme is what we say of it. And they always go
>>together (the theme is sometimes absent. It is because the theme is
>>_already_ known and the new information is the rheme. So the theme may be
>>known with the context). With what you say, I think the topic is the theme
>>and the focus is the rheme. The difference is that you can always speak of
>>theme and rheme, not always of topic and focus.
>
>Well, no, not in my understanding of these terms.  I thought the contrast
>with "topic" was _comment_ and that "focus" contrasts with
>_presupposition_.  I find the opposition 'focus' ~ 'topic' as confusing as
>Christophe does.
I agree, and I realize now that my definitions were unclear.  I
inadvertently gave the impression that the opposition is between "topic" and
"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.)

Part of the confusion arises from the fact that in some sentences, the topic
is identical with the presupposition and the focus is identical with the
comment, while in other sentences (or sometimes even in the same sentence in
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.
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 same:

| ---- 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 ---- |

To further complicate matters, most writers use the term "focus" only in the
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".  Some people (including, I
must confess, myself) vacillate between these two definitions, using
whichever one seems most convenient in a given context.  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.
But either way, it's distinct from "rheme", which, as I understand it, is at
least roughly synonymous with "comment", as "theme" is with "comment".  Thus
the use of these terms would not eliminate the need for a separate term for
"focus" (or better yet, two terms, one for each of my two definitions of
"focus").

At any rate, I apologize for adding to the confusion over this
already-confusing terminology.

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