Topic and Focus - What are We Doing Here And Why is This Room So Cold

As for the non-newsworthy (non-focus) part, let’s call it the presupposition. Research Seminar (2) (Hey, guess what I just found out?) Bill asked [Mary]F to the Superbowl party. Topic and focus—what are we doing here? And why is this room so cold? This only sounds good under the presumption that the speakers know that Bill asked somebody to the Superbowl party, they just didn’t know who. Topic and focus play an important role in: • syntax (sometimes affects word order) • semantics (sometimes affects truth conditions) • pragmatics (felicity conditions) • prosody (placement of accent(s)) That is: (2) asserts that Bill asked Mary to the Superbowl party (2) presupposes that for some x, Bill asked x to the Superbowl party. The presupposition is just what’s left when you take out the focus and put in an x. (This proposal goes back at least as far as Jackendoff (1972).) But… We have received conflicting reports on what topics/foci are, what kinds of topics/foci there are, what effects they have, … So focus opposes presupposition, together they exhaust the sentence. Topichood in English (examples from Vallduví & Engdahl 1996): So… We want to see what’s out there and figure out what’s really right. (Or failing that, we at least want to see what’s out there). What are topic and focus? I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it … —Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring). (though we hope we can do better than that!) de Swart & de Hoop (1995) “Topic and Focus” GLOT International 1(7):3–7 (and a lot of other stuff thrown in for good measure) (3) a. b. c. John saw the play yesterday. Yesterday John saw the play. The play John saw yesterday. about John about yesterday about the play Sentences can be split into a topic (what the sentence is about) and a comment upon it. Topics… what sentences are about… that sounds kind of like “old”… or “not new”… and comments, well, that sounds like something new about the old thing. Could we say that topics are “old” and oppose foci, which are “new”? That is, can we conflate topic—comment with focus—presupposition? (4) Q: What about John, what does he do? A: John FOCUS and TOPIC primarily refer to the information structure (of a sentence). drinks beer. comment About John, he drinks beer. To a first approximation: FOCUS is on new (unexpected, informative) information TOPIC is on given (expected, uninformative) information (what S is “about”) topic As for John… Question–answer congruence for focus (examples and quote from Rooth 1996): “The position of focus in an answer correlates with the questioned position in whquestions, and the position of disjoined alternatives in alternative questions.” Looks like they line up pretty close—maybe there’s hope for this. (1) Does Ede want tea or coffee? Who wants coffee? (5) Q: What about John, what does he drink? A: John drinks [Ede]F wants coffee So, you ask who wants coffee? and “wanting coffee” becomes non-newsworthy— but the identity of the coffee-wanter(s) is newsworthy, new, focused. beer. comment About John, he drinks beer. topic As for John… Ede wants [coffee]F focus It’s drink beer that John does presupposition (John xes) presupposition (John drinks x) focus It’s beer that John drinks But, here they don’t. So we need three divisions: topic, focus, and neither. This is basically Vallduví’s analysis— His terminology for topic, focus, neither is link, focus, and tail. He further assumes that link and tail are both parts of the non-focus ground. Vallduví & Engdahl (1996) defend the partition with the help of Catalan: (8) de Swart & de Hoop give examples from Vallduví (1990) (6) a. b. c. El Joan va deixar una nota damunt la TAULA. El Joan hi2 va deixar una NOTA, damunt la taula2. El Joan l3’hi2 va DEIXAR, una nota3, damunt la taula2. ‘John left a note on the table.’ What did Mary give to Harry? (8a) is typical topic-focus (John = topic, left a note on the table = focus). a. b. Mary gave [a shirt]F to Harry. To Harry Mary gave [a shirt]F. In (8b), on the table is part of the ground, e.g. “—After lunch I laid out all the gifts on the table. —Oh, by the way, did you see? (8b)”. There’s some difference between (6a–b), and it isn’t at the focus–non-focus split. In both cases, a shirt is the newsworthy part, corresponding to what in the question. In (8c), all of the arguments are part of the ground, e.g. “—John did something with a note and the table… —(8c)”. The answer: In (6b), To Harry has been topicalized. So, we have: So: (6) (6) b′. or b′′. Point One: [To Harry]T Mary gave [a shirt]F. (8′) [[To Harry]Link [Mary gave]Tail]Ground [a shirt]Focus. Without a Topic—Comment distinction you can’t distinguish (6a–b). a. b. Point Two: [Mary]T [gave a shirt to Harry]C. [Mary]T [gave a shirt to Harry]C. In other words— English indicates focus with prosodic prominence (from Vallduví & Engdahl 1996): a. a----What about the pipes? What’s wrong with them? The pipes are [F RUSTY ] ] b. a-----------Why does the water from the tap come out brown? 1a-------- I have some rust remover. You have anything rusty? [F [F The PIPES ] are rusty ] c. a-------------I wonder whether the pipes are rusty. The pipes [F ARE ] rusty. (9) Notice: de Swart & de Hoop don’t try to draw the structure of (7a–b), but look at this: What did Mary give to Harry? a′. Three different behaviors, so three different kinds of things. Without a Focus—Presupposition distinction you can’t distinguish (7a–b). Point Three: Point One + Point Two = we need topic, focus, and neither. (7) [El Joan]Topic [va deixar una nota damunt la TAULA]Focus. [El Joan]Topic [hi2 va deixar una NOTA]Focus, [damunt la taula2]Tail. [El Joan]Topic [l3’hi2 va DEIXAR]Focus, [una nota3]Tail, [damunt la taula2]Tail. Vallduví et al. propose that: Topics (=links) left-dislocate out of the clause. Tails right-dislocate out of the clause (leaving a clitic). That which remains in the clause is the Focus. Similarly… (7) a. b. c. [Mary]Link gave [a shirt]Focus to Harry. Where’s the tail? link + focus + tail = S, right? It must be that the tail need not be a constituent. (though we probably already knew that—look at (6b′′).) That is, gave and to Harry together comprise the tail. Seems like “neither focus nor topic” might be a better description, no? (But cf. (8–8′) below—these probably contraindicate describing tail in terms of having no distinguishing features, since movement should be motivated) English encodes ground—focus by moving prosodic stress. Topic—Tail is less clear, but at least sometimes this is encoded by fronting the topic. A famous case in which word order (syntax) encodes information status: Hungarian. (10) show s word orders for szereti ‘loves’, János ‘John’, Marit ‘Mary-ACC’ (from É. Kiss 1981) (10) a. szereti János Marit ‘J loves M.’ b. szereti Marit János ‘J loves M.’ Quantifiers seem to act the same way, even though they don’t appear to have moved. (13) a. b. c. d. e. * The woman hei loved betrayed someonei. * Hisi professor criticized every studenti. Someonei was betrayed by the woman hei loved. Every studenti was criticized by hisi professor. Every professori criticized hisi student(s). c. János szereti Marit ‘It is J who loves M.’ Maybe the quantifiers really are moving but you can’t see it— (quantifier raising “QR”) ∃ a hidden relation between a higher position and the overt position of the quantifier. d. Marit szereti János ‘It is M whom J loves.’ ➠ If so, then (13) is exactly parallel to (12). e. János szereti Marit ‘As for Jj, hej loves M.’ f. Marit szereti János ‘M, J loves.’ (13′) a. g. Marit János szereti ‘As for Mm & Jj, hej loves herm.’ (12′) c. h. János Marit szereti ‘As for Jj & Mm, hej loves herm.’ i. János Marit szereti ‘As for Jj, it is M whom hej loves.’ j. Marit János szereti ‘As for Mm, it is J who loves herm.’ region I topic II focus III verb IV neutral Main stress (bold) falls on the first element after topic. a----------------------lQR ? 1 * someonei the woman hei loved betrayed ti. * Whoi did the woman hei loved betray ti ? " 1 z----------------------mwh-movement One way to think about this: (PF) [pronunciation] wh-mmt [Underlying structure] (input) Generative syntacticians (e.g., É. Kiss 1981) like to believe it’s movement. • There is a “basic” order, either (10a) or (10b). • A focusing rule moves things from region IV into region II. • A topicalization rule moves things from region IV into region I. Famous argument for focus movement via Weak Crossover (Chomsky 1976): (11) WCO: A variable cannot be the antecedent of a pronoun to its left. (Pronouns require antecedents, quantifiers/wh-phrases are inappropriate, traces are fine). Rules out (12c–d) because he is left of t. Who “crossed over” he when moved from t. (12) a. b. c. d. The woman hei loved betrayed Johni. Hisi professor criticized Johni. * Whoi did the woman hei loved betray ti? * Whoi did hisi professor criticize ti? QR [input to interpretation] (LF) Why do we find topic(s) before foci before neutral information in Hungarian? That is, what’s different between wh-movement and QR is just the “timing”— QR just happens to take place after the pronunciation form has already been determined. Ok, the point, the point… (14) a. b. (15) a. b. Bill likes JOHN. BILL likes John. It’s Johni [whoi [Bill likes ei]] It’s Billi [whoi [ei likes John]] The woman hei loved betráyed Johni. * The woman hei loved betrayed JOHNi. WCO violation: It’s Johni [whoi [the woman hei loved betrayed ei]] Focus behaves like QR—it behaves as if it involves a hidden movement. (though note: Rooth 1985 has a counterargument against this) So: An attractive hypothesis is that Hungarian shows us overtly what every language (including English) does eventually. In some languages, it’s just hidden by timing. Why move? A common assumption is that there’s a direct mapping from structural position to semantic interpretation: • Things in a “focus position” will be interpreted as focused (and correspondingly, things that need to be interpreted as focused need to find themselves in a focus position) • Things in a “topic position” will be interpreted as topics (and correspondingly, things that need to be interpreted as topics need to find themselves in a topic position) Example I: “Exhaustiveness” in focusing (17) Mária látta Pétert. Mary saw Peter-ACC ‘It was Maria (and no one else) who saw Peter.’ Focus in Hungarian is exhaustive—it means X (and only X). Is it in English (18a)? (18) a. b. Susan is in Groningen. Only Susan is in Groningen. E.g., Rizzi (1997) who proposes that topics and foci (eventually) occupy specifiers of functional heads high in the structure (“TopP” and “FocP”). (Rizzi was by no means the Well, no—if it were, (18a–b) would mean the same thing. (Right?) first to propose something like this—but his is the paper we’ll probably look at in this seminar) Oh no! Does this mean focus isn’t focus isn’t focus? Sadly (or happily), it does indeed. Some languages use morphology (not just syntax or prosody) for information structure: Japanese—marks topic with morpheme (roughly in the case marker position) wa. (16) Kuzira wa honnyuu-doobutu desu whale TOP mammal is ‘A whale is a mammal’ (‘As for a whale, it is a mammal’) Example II: “Identificational” vs. “informational / presentational” focus Modern Greek, Finnish, Hungarian—an in situ focus and a preposed focus (É Kiss 1998). É. Kiss (1998) says: identificational (moved) focus is exhaustive. (yet still non-presupposed). informational (in situ) focus is not exhaustive. (yet still non-presupposed) (19) Ok, so that’s pretty easy. a. Ston Petro dhanisan to vivlio to.the Petro lent.3PL the.ACC book ‘It was to Petro that they lent the book. b. Dhanisan to vivlio STON PETRO ‘They lent the book TO PETRO.’ a. Annalle Mikko antoi kukkia Anna.ADESS Mikko gave flowers ‘It was to Anna that Mikko gave flowers.’ b. Mikko antoi kukkia ANNALLE ‘Mikko gave flowers TO ANNA.’ a. Tengap este Marinak mutattam be Pétert. last night Mary.DAT introduced.I PERF Peter.ACC ‘It was to Mary that I introduced Peter last night.’ b. Tengap este be mutattam Pétert MARINAK. ‘Last night I introduced Peter TO MARY.’ • There are three kinds of information. Focus, Topic, and Neither. • Any category may be referred to by a language in order to encode information structure: Catalan: Topic moves left, Neithers move right. … English: Main accent falls in the Focus constituent. Topics (can) move left. … Japanese: Topics are marked by wa. … Hungarian: Foci move left, Topics move left even further. Main accent in first non-topic region. … If that’s all there is to it, what’s all the interest about? (20) (21) Finnish Hungarian Even Catalan! (Was Vallduví talking only about presentational focus?) (22) Well, the problem is that focus isn’t focus isn’t focus and topic isn’t topic isn’t topic— There are differences between (and even within) languages that indicate that we need a richer typology than that. Modern Greek a. Del calaix la Núria (els) va treure els esperons. of.the drawer the Núria them has taken.out the spurs ‘It was out of the drawer that Núria took the spurs.’ b. La Núria els va treure DEL CALAIX els ‘Núria took the spurs OUT OF THE DRAWER.’ esperons. Catalan Example III: ±Contrastiveness in focus Example V: ±Contrastiveness in topics Even in their identificational focus, languages can differ on the dimension of “contrast”: Foci aren’t the only things that can be contrastive, topics can be contrastive too: (23) (26) a. It was because of the rain that we arrived late. English b. A Háború és békét Tolsztoj írta the War and Peace.ACC Tolstoy wrote ‘It was Tolstoy who wrote War and Peace.’ Hungarian Mary’s DOCTORATE is in CHEMISTRY. B A topic focus “A, B accents” are discussed in Jackendoff (1972). These are both evaluated against an open set (of reasons, of writers). (“[–contrastive]”) Vallduví & Vilkuna (1998): contrastiveness is orthogonal to topic/comment. (but they identify focus with contrast—did they lose informational focus?) In Rumanian, Italian, Catalan, and Finnish, identificational focus can only take place against a closed, known set of candidates (“[+contrastive]”). (24) is only good as an answer to something like Which you two broke the vase? (not Who broke the vase?). de Swart & de Hoop (remember them?) give an example from Krifka: (27) (24) (*) Maria ha rotto il vaso Maria has broken the vase ‘It is Maria who broke the vase.’ Italian Q: A: What do you know about John’s sisters? [TJohn’s [Feldest] sister] is very nice. Shows that topic can’t just be old information, since eldest isn’t old. This might qualify as a contrastive topic, however. Example IV: Two kinds of identificational focus? Example VI: Shifted vs. continuing topics Bush & Tevdoradze (2000) argue we should split identificational focus again: (25) Foci (reproduced from Bush & Tevdoradze 2000) qp Informational Identificational qp Type I Type II English it-clefts English foci with rising intonation Hungarian focus-moved constituents Georgian focus-moved constituents Informational focus: •✔ (Yesterday) Mary bought a bòok. She also bought a pen. •✔ What did Mary see? She saw most of the bóoks. Type I focus: •✖ (Yesterday) it was a bóok that Mary bought. #She also bought a pen. •✖ What did Mary buy? #It was most of the bóoks that Mary bought. Type II focus: •✖ (Yesterday) Mary bought a bóòk. #She also bought a pèn. •✔ What did Mary buy? Mary bought most of the bóòks. Informational focus can be narrow (What did Mary buy? Mary bought a [Fhat].) or wide (What happened? [FMary bought a hat]. Identificational focus can be narrow ( I: or wide (II: It is [IDF[Fa coat]] that Mary bought.) [IDFMary bought [Fa cóàt] ] ) A left-dislocated topic can be entirely new, as in (28): A shifted topic. (28) This guy, he tells me he wants a job in my firm. Shifted topic Continuing topics are the kind that are discourse-old, like to be replaced by pronouns: (29) a. b. He/Max saw Rosa yesterday. Max saw her/Rosa yesterday. Aissen (1992) studies three Mayan languages, Tzotzil, Tz’utujil, and Jakaltek. She argues that Topics in Tzotzil and Jakaltek are clause-external. Topics in Tz’utujil are clause-internal. She observes that Topics in Tzotzil and Jakaltek are always switch topics Topics in Tz’utujil can be continuing topics. She speculates that Crosslinguistically, there may be two topic positions, one for switch topic (CP-external), one for continuing topic (CP-internal). Theme—Rheme Unclear and not often used—we’ll come back to try to figure out what Halliday (1967) meant by “theme” and “rheme” if it ever becomes relevant. Topic—Comment Insofar as the sentence is “about” the topic, the topic needs to be defined. Reinhart (1982) notes that an ill-defined topic causes a sentence to lack a truth value whereas an illdefined non-topic constituent can lead simply to falsity: (30) a. b. The King of France visited the exhibition yesterday. no truth value The exhibition was visited by the King of France yesterday. false Association with focus—pragmatics or semantics? Some effects of focus appear to be outside the semantics, i.e. in pragmatics. “Pragmatics” is almost canonically = conversational implicature (Grice 1975). Conversation is generally cooperative: A speaker’s contribution is relevant (RELATION), (only) as informative as required (QUANTITY), something for which the speaker has adequate evidence and does not believe to be false (QUALITY), and is unambiguous, succinct, orderly, and not obscure (MANNER). Rooth’s (1992) example: Mats and his roommates took a test. How’d it go, Mats? (33) We saw in (29) that the subject need not be the topic, so if we can make something else be the topic in (30a), we should be able to salvage it (i.e. make it have a truth value, namely false), right? (31) As for the exhibition, the King of France visited it yesterday. false a. b. Well, I passed. Well, I passed. I [passed]F [I]F passed I did no better than passing. Somebody didn’t pass. • if you ace a test, you passed the test; so ace would make a stronger statement. • since the strongest statement was not used, we conclude Mats thought it was false. • (33b) conversationally implicates that Mats did not ace the test. I think that’s correct. • if Mats, Steve, and Paul passed the test, Mats did… • (33b) conversationally implicates that Steve and Paul did not pass the test. If we want to talk in terms of “new information” when we talk about focus, we have to be very careful what we mean by “new.” For example, it can’t be new in terms of reference, since you can focus himself in (32). (Reinhart 1982) There’s an additional component which I’m not sure about—namely: (32) This has no conversational implicature. Why? Steve, Mats, and Paul all aced the test would still be a stronger statement, wouldn’t it? Q: A: Who did Felix praise? Felix praised HIMSELF. (33) c. Two things: Topic-focus articulation Prague school (e.g. Sgall, Hajičová & Panevová 1986). We’ll be getting a more in depth introduction to this on February 15, when Eva Hajičová visits the seminar. everything with higher communicative dynamism is focus what the sentence says about the topic (= comment) [I passed]F — • (33c) is treated by de Swart & de Hoop as all-focus. This might ruin the “scale of strength”—is John left a stronger statement than I passed? • In (33a) and (33c) both, stress falls on passed— but in (33a) it isn’t default stress. It appears to be a “B accent” (same as in Mary’s [doctorate]B is in [chemistry]A from (26)) Of what importance is this? Everything has a level of communicative dynamism (newness increases this) There is a distinguished cutoff point— everything with lower communicative dynamism is topic what the sentence is “about” Well, I passed. Pragmatic effects don’t affect truth conditions (i.e. (33a–c) are all true iff Mats passed). Same with (34)—true in the same model worlds, but with different “suggestions” (34) a. b. John did not introduce Bill to Sue. John did not introduce Bill to Sue. He introduced Bill to somebody else. He introduced somebody else to Sue. Every sentence necessarily has a focus (but it might be all focus). But focus can affect truth conditions (Jackendoff 1972), so focus isn’t just pragmatic: Claim: Czech pretty much shows us communicative dynamism on the surface. (left → right = topic → focus). (35) a. b. Mary only introduced Bill to Sue. Mary only introduced Bill to Sue. false if M introduced B to J. false if M introduced J to S. This means that semantic interpretation has to have access to focus structure. If focus structure is determined by phonology than phonology must feed interpretation? Maybe, but more common (Jackendoff 1972): • There is a syntactic feature F which affects semantics, interpretation (and can drive movement? e.g., in Hungarian.) Do we need all these distinctions? If not, which ones do we keep? Which ones can be collapsed? If so, what was overlooked by authors who failed to distinguish them? Multiple foci: Occasionally, one finds allegations that there can be only constituent in focus. But consider (from Krifka 1991): (36) Something like a Summary: and some Questions to keep in mind: Where do the distinctions belong? Syntax? Semantics? Pragmatics? To what extent do these overlap? John only introduced Bill to Sue. (The only pair x, y of which John introduced x to y is true is Bill, Sue.) That’s one kind of potential multiple focus—Krifka calls it complex focus. Identificational vs. Information Focus [independently able to be wide/narrow?] But consider this (prepare your brain, these take a little bit of thinking): ±Contrastive Focus (37) John only introduced [Bill]F to Mary. That is, John introduced just Bill to Mary. (38) He also only introduced [Bill]F to [Sue]F That is, John also introduced to Sue just Bill. He also1 only2 introduced [Bill]F2 to [Sue]F1. (Rooth 1996) ±Exhaustive Focus Shifted vs. Continuing Topic Rooth (1996) points out a problem for his 1992 approach based on examples like these: (39) We only3 recovered the diary entries that [Marilyn]F3 made about John. Of the diary entries about John, only Marilyn’s were recovered. (40) We also1 only2 recovered the diary entries that [Marilyn]F2 made about [Bobby]F1. Like with John, the same was true for Bobby— Of the diary entries about Bobby, only Marilyn’s were recovered. What the problem is we’ll save for when we discuss Rooth (1996). The point: The meaning of these sentences (given association of also and only with a focused element) really seems to tell us that there can be more than one focus in a sentence. ±Contrastive Topic Focus vs. Presupposition Topic vs. Ground Focus vs. Tail vs. Link