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Pragmatics: Topic and Focus October 3, 2007

11-721 Grammars and Lexicons

Based on slides by Alicia Tribble

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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?

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Outline for Today

• Topic and focus in English• Differences between word order in English and

Russian and Hungarian• Differences between English and Chinese topic-

comment sentences

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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

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How to express new information in English

• A. Who saw Bill? perceiver: who/John (new)• B. John saw Bill/him. perceived: Bill/him (old)

– Stress on “John”

• A. Who did John see? perceiver: John/he (old)• B. John/he saw Bill. perceived: who/Bill (new)

– Stress on “Bill”

• Intonation encodes new information.

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How to mess up the encoding of new information (Comrie, page 56)

• A. Who saw Bill? perceiver: who/John (new)• B. John saw Bill/him. perceived: Bill/him (old)

– Stress on “John”

• A. Who saw Bill? perceiver: who/John (new)• B. #John saw Bill/him. perceived: Bill/him (old)

– Stress on “Bill/him”

• A. Who did John see? perceiver: John/he (old)• B. John/he saw Bill. perceived: who/Bill (new)

– Stress on “Bill”

• A. Who did John see? perceiver: John/he (old)• B. #John/he saw Bill. perceived: who/Bill (new)

– Stress on “John”

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 (old)• B. It’s Bill that/who saw John. perceived: who/Bill (new)

– “Bill” is clefted.

• Clefting encodes new information.

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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? perceiver: John/he (old)• B. It’s Bill who John saw. perceived: who/Bill (new)

• A. Who did John see? perceiver: John/he (old)• B. #It’s John who saw Bill. perceived: who/Bill (new)

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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?

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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.

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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)

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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 [ ].

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 NPsGrammatical 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

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Cross-Linguistic Variation

Case Marking

Agreement

Basic Word Order

Marked Word Order

Grammatical Relations

Semantic Roles

Pragmatic RolesEnglish

English

Italian

Russian

Hungarian

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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.’

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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.

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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 Zolid. Zoli-t Vili l´atta. Zoli Vili saw Vili saw Zoli.

Perceiver: Vili/who (new)

Perceived: Zoli (old)

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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)

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Cross-Linguistic Variation

Case Marking

Agreement

Basic Word Order

Marked Word Order

Grammatical Relations

Semantic Roles

Pragmatic RolesEnglish

English

Italian

Russian

Hungarian

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Cross-Linguistic Variation

Case Marking

Agreement

Basic Word Order

Marked Word Order

Grammatical Relations

Semantic Roles

Pragmatic RolesEnglish

English

Italian

Russian

Hungarian

Russian

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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

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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.’

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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.’

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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 very

valuable.’

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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

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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).