[B-Greek] Re: Predicate as topic, word order in Aesop
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Mon Jun 27 18:47:52 EDT 2005
> Helma Dik speaks of "topic
assignment" as if it were a form of pragmatic marking. Is she
navigating a
different stream of FG than Randall Buth and yourself?>
Yes, perhaps or probably. Simon Dik (no relation to Helma Dik, except
assumedly being Dutch) developed Functional Grammar in the late 70's.
His first books 1978, 1980, 1981, had a core predication which allowed
Topic and Focus to be NON-OBLIGATORY pragmatic functions that could be
applied to the generation of a clause/sentence. In other words, a
Topic was not just 'what a sentence was about', it was also a special
function that was applied to the output of the clause while it was on
its way from within the brain to 'output'.
However, in Simon Dik's expanded FG theory in 1989 he added many
different kinds of notional topics without stipulating how these were
grammaticized or produced rules for the output of a clause. I think
that Helma Dik is following in this expanded but undefined model with
multiple notional topics. Thus, she can demand that a clause would
have a topic because it must be about something or else it wouldn't
exist.
I don't make such a demand. A sentence can exist that does not make
use of special Topic marking. If someone wants to apply Occam's razor
between us, I would claim the highground/simplicity :-) <grin>. (That
was 'tongue-in-cheek', simplicity does not equal correctness--RB) I
would not see a necessity of imposing a pragmatic function on a clause
analysis that is not signalled somehow in the structural system. Thus,
I would restrict subjectivity and say that a reader/listener/decoder
only interprets a topic when marked/signalled in the code-system. No
special code, no need for grammatical topic interpretation.
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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