Research
Topic-focus
The Typology of Topic and Focus
A New Approach to the Discourse-Syntax Interface
Aim of the project
As mentioned in the summary, this project aims at providing a fine-grained typology of focus and topic that a theory of discourse-syntax interface can build on. It has long been observed that speakers treat elements of conversation in various ways. Whether an element is new or important, or whether it is already the topic of conversation may affect word order, intonation, and the forms of words (Lambretcht 1994). This project investigates how these elements interact with each other and with the structure of the sentence.
Why study the interaction between topic, focus, and the structure of language?
One reason for investigating the interaction between focus/topic and language structure is that focus and topic are determined by external factors. These are based on the context in which the conversation is taking place and/or what the conversation is about. Yet, focus and topic related effects, such as word order alternation, intonation change, the forms of words are determined by properties that are internal to the language. We are therefore in a situation where it seems that external factors, such as context, may interact with factors that are internal to language (Jackendoff 1972; Gundel 1974; Chomsky 1972; Riszzi 1997). If this description is correct, then the study of the interaction between focus and topic, and the structure of language might teach us more about the points of contacts between pragmatics and the structure of language.
The missing link
There has been considerable effort spent studying focus and topic separately, but a typology of focus and topic that allows a better understanding of the interaction between discourse-pragmatics and syntax is still missing. In the generative tradition, for instance, it is fair to say that the study of focus and topic is based on the idea that focus and topic are unitary phenomena. In the case of focus, one element of the context is given more importance than the rest. In the case of topic, a comment or remark is given about an old or known piece of information that is topic of the conversation. But there are good reasons for believing that such a uniform treatment of focus and topic is too simplistic. Even though focus and topic relate to each other in various ways, they involve distinct classes of phenomena.
For instance, languages display distinct types of focus and topic that affect the structure of the sentence differently. It therefore appears that we cannot reach a better understanding of the interaction between discourse-pragmatics and syntax if we don’t make the necessary effort to understand better what triggers focus and topic, and how focus and topic are realised cross-linguistically. In other words, we cannot make significant progress in this field unless we reach a fine-grained typology of focus and topic, which a theory of information structure and a theory of discourse-syntax interface can build on.
Aspects of the project
The first aspect of this project aims at providing such a typology by looking at the morphosyntax and the discourse functions of focus and topic across languages. An innovative aspect of this sub-project is to investigate the discourse-syntax interface by creating a typological database, which will allow us to achieve a better understanding of focus and topic, and their interactions with grammatical structure. This database will be made available to interested researchers at the end of the project. The second aspect of the project tries to answer the related question of how focus and topic interact with other elements of the discourse and how they affect the structure of language. To achieve this, we will investigate in detail the morphosyntax of focus and topic in a smaller number of typologically different languages. A third aspect of this project is to investigate the interaction between prosody, clause structure, and information structure by looking at the potential role of intonation in tonal languages in topic and focus constructions. Click here to read a full description of the project.