{"id":419,"date":"2014-07-13T23:35:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T03:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grieve-smith.com\/blog1\/?p=419"},"modified":"2019-11-03T18:13:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-03T23:13:19","slug":"know-your-topics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/know-your-topics\/","title":{"rendered":"Know your topics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There were a couple of years when I was tremendously confused about pragmatics and information structure. I learned a lot from reading Knud Lambrecht&#8217;s 1994 book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/us\/academic\/subjects\/languages-linguistics\/semantics-and-pragmatics\/information-structure-and-sentence-form-topic-focus-and-mental-representations-discourse-referents\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Information Structure and Sentence Form<\/em><\/a>. And one of the most useful things I learned was that people use the word &#8220;topic&#8221; to mean several different things, some of which are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the words and definitions that Lambrecht used instead of &#8220;topic&#8221; for these concepts, along with some commentary:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>topic referent<\/strong>. &#8220;A referent is interpreted as the topic of a proposition if in a given situation the proposition is construed as being about this referent.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>topic expression<\/strong> (also known as <strong>topic NP<\/strong>, <strong>topic pronoun<\/strong>, <strong>topic phrase<\/strong>, <strong>topic constituent<\/strong>). &#8220;A constituent is a topic expression if the proposition expressed by the clause with which it is associated is pragmatically construed as being about the referent of this constituent.&#8221; Topic expressions are what the speaker\/author produces; topic referents are the actual topics that the topic expressions refer to.<\/li>\n<li><strong>topic-announcing expression<\/strong>. An expression used to announce a topic shift or promote a referent to topic status. Topic expressions simply signal what the sentence is about, while topic-announcing expressions mark a change in the topic referent.<\/li>\n<li><strong>subject<\/strong>. A syntactic role describing an argument of a verb, often referring to the agent of an action. &#8220;Subjects are unmarked topics.&#8221; In traditional rhetoric, <strong>subject<\/strong> (also called <strong>psychological subject<\/strong>) meant something very similar to Lambrecht?s <strong>topic referent<\/strong>: &#8220;The thing which the proposition expressed by the sentence is about.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>agent<\/strong>. A semantic role describing an active participant in an action. Agents are often topic referents.<\/li>\n<li><strong>theme<\/strong>. The element which comes first in the sentence. A Prague School term, which is also called &#8220;topic&#8221; by some. Lambrecht?s <strong>topic expressions<\/strong> often come first in a sentence.<\/li>\n<li><strong>old information<\/strong>. Presupposed propositions. All topic referents must be in the presupposition, but not all referents in the presupposition are topics.<\/li>\n<li><strong>topicalization<\/strong> (also called <strong>fronting<\/strong>). A syntactic construction where a noun phrase that is normally integrated into the argument structure of a sentence instead appears at the beginning of the sentence, before the subject. Often used as a <strong>topic-announcing expression<\/strong>, but also for <strong>contrastive focus<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>left-dislocation<\/strong> (also called <strong>left-detachment<\/strong>). Like <strong>topicalization<\/strong>, but with a coreferential pronoun integrated into the sentence. Often used as a <strong>topic-announcing expression<\/strong>, but also for <strong>contrastive focus<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Chinese-style&#8221; topic<\/strong>. Where the normal sentence structure has a place for <strong>topic-announcing constituents<\/strong> that are not necessarily arguments of the verb. Lambrecht?s topic expressions include these and others.<\/li>\n<li><strong>discourse topic<\/strong>. What the entire discourse is about. Lambrecht?s <strong>topic referent<\/strong> typically covers only a particular sentence, not the entire discourse.<\/li>\n<li><strong>topic\/comment<\/strong>. One of Lambrecht&#8217;s possible sentence types, discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. Necessarily includes a <strong>topic expression<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>antitopic<\/strong> (also called <strong>right-dislocation<\/strong> and <strong>right-detachment<\/strong>). A construction similar to left-dislocation, but where the noun phrase appears at the end of the sentence. Lambrecht analyzes antitopics as unaccented topic-announcing expressions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>contrastive topic<\/strong>. A construction that contrasts two propositions based on their topic referents. Typically has two accented topic expressions.<\/li>\n<li><strong>focus<\/strong>. &#8220;The semantic component of a pragmatically structured proposition whereby the assertion differs from the presupposition.&#8221; <strong>Topic expressions<\/strong> and <strong>focus expressions<\/strong> are both sometimes accented, and it?s hard to tell whether a particular accented constituent is a topic expression or a focus expression.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hope this helps!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There were a couple of years when I was tremendously confused about pragmatics and information structure. I learned a lot from reading Knud Lambrecht&#8217;s 1994 book Information Structure and Sentence Form. And one of the most useful things I learned was that people use the word &#8220;topic&#8221; to mean several different things, some of which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/know-your-topics\/\" class=\"excerpt-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,28,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-categorization","category-pragmatics","category-semantics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1240,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}