[B-Greek] Predicate as topic

Elizabeth Kline kline-dekoning at earthlink.net
Thu Jun 30 13:11:59 EDT 2005


On 6/27/05 3:08 PM, "R Yochanan Bitan Buth" <ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> For me, Dik is assuming that every sentence must have pragmatic topic
> assignment, otherwise ³these clauses are about nothing and do not make a
> point.² I do not make that assumption. I am perfectly happy to say that a
> sentence can have a default order without any SPECIAL MARKING. So I don¹t have
> a problem with a clause-initial verb and nothing else specially marked for
> Topic.

Randall,

In a coherent text (a tautology) each new text unit needs to be tied to the
previous units in some manner, anaphora, contextualization ...

I think "Topic" is a confusing term to use for a constituent with a
contextualizing function.  In the gospels, a new unit of Jesus' teaching is
often introduced with a clause initial verb of saying. This verb of saying
ties the new teaching unit to the previous ones because it tags the
following text as a teaching of Jesus. But the verb of saying is not the
Topic. 

However, Helma Dik is arguing that a clause initial verb can be assigned the
Topic function which means that it is a Topic in the narrow sense. In her
examples the initial verb is what the clause is about (Topic) and this ties
the clause to some element in the preceding context which is also about this
Topic. This claim is more specific with fewer examples than the claim that a
clause initial verb functions as a contextualizing constituent.

Elizabeth Kline 





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