Pragmatics: Topic and Focus
October 3, 2007
11-721 Grammars and Lexicons
Based on slides by Alicia Tribble
1
A Joke based on topic and focus
• Gundel and Fretheim, page 175, citing Chao (1968)
– A. We are now passing the oldest winery in the
region.
– B. Why?
• What we are passing now is the oldest winery in the
region.
• What we are doing now is passing the oldest winery in
the region.
• Does this joke work in Chinese?
2
Outline for Today
• Topic and focus in English
• Differences between word order in English and
Russian and Hungarian
• Differences between English and Chinese topiccomment sentences
3
Pragmatic Roles
“The flow of given and new information”
When we hear the sentence
Who saw Bill?,
we understand that someone saw Bill. This fact becomes
given information, a shared assumption between the
speaker and hearer.
The question asks for a piece of new information, Who?
Who saw Bill?
new old/given
4
How to express new information in
English
• A. Who saw Bill?
• B. John saw Bill/him.
perceiver: who/John (new)
perceived: Bill/him (old)
– Stress on “John”
• A. Who did John see?
• B. John/he saw Bill.
perceiver: John/he
perceived: who/Bill
(old)
(new)
– Stress on “Bill”
• Intonation encodes new information.
5
How to mess up the encoding of new
information (Comrie, page 56)
• A. Who saw Bill?
• B. John saw Bill/him.
perceiver: who/John (new)
perceived: Bill/him (old)
– Stress on “John”
• A. Who saw Bill?
• B. #John saw Bill/him.
perceiver: who/John (new)
perceived: Bill/him (old)
– Stress on “Bill/him”
• A. Who did John see?
• B. John/he saw Bill.
perceiver: John/he
perceived: who/Bill
(old)
(new)
perceiver: John/he
perceived: who/Bill
(old)
(new)
– Stress on “Bill”
• A. Who did John see?
• B. #John/he saw Bill.
– Stress on “John”
6
Focus Using Cleft Constructions
(Kroeger)
• English can express new information with a cleft
sentence: It's x that ...
• The cleft sentence may take on a reading of
contrastive focus.
– Contrastive focus implies that the focused
item is being chosen from a delimited set
It's John that saw Bill (,not Joe).
It was Mary that John gave the flowers to (, not Susan).
It is the Secretary who will visit us (, not the President).
7
Why is it called a cleft?
• “Cleft” is the past participle of “cleave”, to cut.
To cleave off a subject:
John
saw Bill.
1. cut here
2. add “it’s” and “who/that”
It’s John that saw Bill.
8
Why is it called a cleft?
To cleave off a non-subject.
John saw
Bill.
1. cut here
2. move the piece you cut off
3. add “it’s” and “who/that”
It’s Bill that John saw.
9
Meaning of clefts
• Note that these mean the same thing in the sense that
the noun phrases have the same semantic roles:
– John saw Bill.
– It’s John who saw Bill. (subject is cleft)
– It’s Bill who John saw. (object is cleft)
• Perceiver: John
• Perceived: Bill
• The cleft word order is not encoding semantic roles or
grammatical relations. It is encoding new information.
10
How to express new information in
English
• A. Who saw Bill?
perceiver: who/John (new)
• B. It’s John that/who saw Bill/him.
– “John” is clefted.
perceived: Bill/him (old)
• A. Who did John see?
perceiver: John/he
• B. It’s Bill that/who saw John. perceived: who/Bill
– “Bill” is clefted.
(old)
(new)
• Clefting encodes new information.
11
How to mess up the encoding of new
information (Comrie, page 56)
• A. Who saw Bill?
perceiver: who/John (new)
• B. It’s John who saw Bill/him.
perceived: Bill/him (old)
• A. Who saw Bill?
perceiver: who/John (new)
• B. #It’s Bill who John saw. perceived: Bill/him (old)
• A. Who did John see?
• B. It’s Bill who John saw.
perceiver: John/he
perceived: who/Bill
(old)
(new)
• A. Who did John see?
perceiver: John/he
• B. #It’s John who saw Bill. perceived: who/Bill
(old)
(new)
12
Focus Using Pseudo-clefts
• Pseudo-clefts also mark contrastive focus: what
x-does is y
What John gave to Mary was a bunch of flowers.
What I like for breakfast is cold pizza and coke.
• Q: Where is the presupposition (old information)
in each of these sentences?
13
Pseudo-cleft
• What did John give to Mary?
• What John gave to Mary was a bunch of flowers.
• #(The person) who John gave flowers to was
Mary.
14
Topic-Comment
• These constructions separate “what the
sentence is about” (topic) from a statement that
should be interpreted in that domain (comment).
• Used when the speaker wants to emphasize this
contrast.
Topic and focus are mutually exclusive; they are encoded
differently. A topic can be new, but it still functions as
background knowledge for interpretation of the
comment. (Kroeger)
15
Extracted Topic
• A construction used to express contrastive topic
• Topic is fronted, leaving a gap in the comment:
This ice cream I like [ ].
Your sister I can’t stand [ ].
• Implies that the topic is chosen from a set
(Your mother is all right, but) your sister I can’t stand [ ].
16
Syntax of Extracted Topics
In this construction, the topic phrase is
syntactically linked to the comment by taking the
grammatical relation of the gap.
This ice cream I like [OBJ].
OBJ
Your sister I can’t stand [OBJ].
OBJ
17
Topic Using Left-Dislocation
• Used to change topics
• Topic provides antecedent for a pronoun in the
comment (resumptive pronoun):
My friend John, a snake bit him on the hand and he
lost three fingers.
This man I know, his wife won $1 million.
18
External Topic
• Signals a return to a previously mentioned topic
• Bears little or no syntactic link to the comment,
only a semantic link: As for x ...
– As for John, a python swallowed his dog.
– As for me, I’ll be sailing the Caribbean.
– As for Manila, the traffic is unbelievable.
19
Topic and “givenness”
• A topic cannot be indefinite. It has to be
something the hearer is familiar with.
• The window, it’s still open.
• *A window, it’s still open.
20
Layers of Structure
• Building Blocks / Coding Mechanisms:
Case marking
Word order (and phrase structure)
Agreement (e.g., verb agrees with subject)
Intonation
• Information Content / Functions of NPs
Grammatical relations (SUBJ, OBJ, OBL)
Semantic or Thematic Roles (Agent, Patient, Theme)
Pragmatic Roles (Topic and Focus)
Languages use building blocks in different ways to
encode content
21
Cross-Linguistic Variation
Case Marking
Agreement
Russian
Grammatical Relations
Italian
Semantic Roles
English
Hungarian
Basic Word Order
Marked Word Order
Pragmatic Roles
English
22
Focus in Russian
(Comrie, p78)
• English word order codes grammatical relations.
Russian word order seems free by comparison:
Tanja ubila Mašu. ‘Tanja killed Masha.’
Tanja Mašu ubila. ‘Tanja killed Masha.’
Mašu ubila Tanja. ‘Tanja killed Masha.’
23
Focus in Russian
(Comrie, p78)
• Although GR’s are the same for all, Pragmatic
Roles are different.
Tanja ubila Mašu. ‘Tanja killed Masha.’
Tanja Mašu ubila. ‘Tanja killed Masha.’
Mašu ubila Tanja. ‘Tanja killed Masha.’
• Russian basic word order places topic at the
beginning of the sentence and focus at the end.
24
Hungarian
•
The new information immediately precedes the verb. Since question words
are asking for new information, they also immediately precede the verb.
(Comrie, page 57)
a. Ki l´atta Zoli-t?
who saw Zoli
Who saw Zoli?
b. Zoli-t ki l´atta?
Zoli who saw
Who saw Zoli?
c. Vili l´atta Zoli-t.
Vili saw Zoli
Vili saw Zoli
d. Zoli-t Vili l´atta.
Zoli Vili saw
Vili saw Zoli.
Perceiver: Vili/who (new)
Perceived: Zoli (old)
25
Hungarian
a. Ki-t l´atta Zoli?
who saw Zoli
Who did Zoli see?
b. Zoli ki-t l´atta?
Zoli who saw
Who did Zoli see?
c. Zoli Vili-t l´atta.
Zoli Vili saw
Zoli saw Vili.
d. Vili-t l´atta. Zoli
Vili saw Zoli
Zoli saw Vili
Perceiver: Zoli (old)
Perceived: Vili/who (new)
26
Cross-Linguistic Variation
Case Marking
Agreement
Russian
Grammatical Relations
Italian
Semantic Roles
English
Hungarian
Basic Word Order
Marked Word Order
Pragmatic Roles
English
27
Cross-Linguistic Variation
Case Marking
Agreement
Russian
Grammatical Relations
Italian
Semantic Roles
English
Hungarian
Basic Word Order
Russian
Marked Word Order
Pragmatic Roles
English
28
Topic in Mandarin
• Coded using word order: topic is fronted
• Topic can serve as antecedent for a resumptive
pronoun
• Topic Establishes domain for the comment
• Topic is incompatible with question words (i.e.
focus)
These are features of Topic shared among many
languages, including English
29
Multiple Topics
(Kroeger, p143)
• Allowed in Mandarin but not in most other
languages
a
Lǐ xiānsheng zuótiān wǒ kànjiàn le.
Li Mr.
yesterday
I
see
PERF
‘Mr. Li, yesterday I saw (him).’
b
zhè-jiàn shì Lǐ xiānsheng wǒ gàosu guo.
this-CLASS matter Li Mr.
I
inform
PAST
‘This matter, Mr. Li, I have told (him) about.’
30
Topicalized Objects
• Direct objects can be topicalized by fronting them,
leaving a gap in the comment:
a
Zhè-běn xiǎoshuō Zhāngsān kàn wán le.
This
novel
Zhangsan
read finish PERF
‘This novel Zhangsan has finished reading.’
b
Júzi wǒ bu chī le.
orange I
not eat PERF
‘Oranges I don’t eat.’ or: ‘The orange I will not eat.’
31
Topic-Controlled Coreference
(Li, p26)
• Evidence that Mandarin is Topic-Prominent, not
Subject-Prominent.
a Nà ke shù yèzi dà, suǒyi wǒ bu xǐhuān [ ].
that
tree leaves big so
I
not like
‘That tree, the leaves are big, so I don’t like (it).’
b Nà kuài tián dàozi zhǎngde hěn dà, suǒyi
that
piece land
rice
grow
very big
so
hěn zhíqián.
very valuable
‘That piece of land, rice grows very big, so (it – the land) is very32
valuable.’
Difference between Chinese and
English
* Nei chang huo xiaofangdui
that class fire fire brigade
laide zao, suoyi hen lei.
came early so very tired
That fire, the fire brigade came early, so very tired
33
Note: clefts can be used for old
information too
• Gundel and Fretheim, page 186
– The federal government is dealing with AIDS
as if the virus was a problem that didn’t travel
along interstate highways and was none of its
business. It’s this lethal national intertia in
the face of the most devastating epidemic
of the late 20th century that finally prompted
one congressman to strike out on his own.
(Minneapolis Star and Tribune, cited in
Hedberg 1990)
34
Note: Topicalization construction used
for information focus (new information)
• Gundel and Fretheim, page 183
– Which of these clothes should we give to the
Salvation Army?
– That COAT you’re wearing, I think we can
give away.
35
Topicalized specific indefinite
• Gundel and Fretheim, page 181, citing Prince
(1985):
– An old preacher down there, they augured
under the grave where his wife was buried.
• The indefinite is not familiar to the hearer.
Reinhart (1981) argues that topics only have to
be referential, not familiar.
36
Topic (opposite of comment) is not the
same as backward-looking center
• Gundel and Fretheim, page 180
• Tomlin (1995), wa can mark noun phrases that
are referentially new, and therefore not the
backward-looking center (continuing topic of
conversation).
37