Discourse topics and referential frequency
is within its textual span and something of how that unit relates to it. That is, a high-level topic seems to be maintained more through knowledge structure than through its activation status. That being so,
the speaker can do two things to facilitate the continued recognition of a high-level topic: he can clearly establish it as topic previously on the higher level as Matthew does for Jesus in 1:1–2:23,
and he can clearly signal how the embedded space relates to it as he does in 3:3, 11–12.
Second-order discourse topics appear actually to remain at least semiactive, and this could be the case with other high-level topics depending on how the specific content being processed relates to them.
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This semiactive status is reflected in formal signals of different kinds, particularly intermediate coding weight. First, in certain languages remote topics make use of distal demonstratives of the type ‘that N’
see, for example, Bantu initiative 2005; since in the Givenness hierarchy proximal demonstratives ‘this N’ indicate active referents, there is a possibility that distal demonstratives can be associated with
semiactive status. Second, the reintroduction or reactivation of a high-level topic after it has been allowed to fade from activation generally requires lighter coding than for brand-new inactive referents. Thus, in
the periodontist text Example text 31, the reactivation expression Her boss in line 33 is not in the syntactic focus domain of that sentence as is required in formal introductions §3.5.1 of an inactive
referent, but rather is rather grammatical subject in the unmarked topic-comment configuration. A similar thing is true in Koiné Greek when Jesus is reactivated after the embedded discourse unit with John the
Baptist as topic, in Matthew 3:13: ‘Then arrived Jesus from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him.’ Since high-level topics tend to have intermediate coding weight when they are
reactivated, this suggests that they remain at least semiactive throughout their textual span.
As Givón 1995:105 points out, when a high-level topic is reactivated, components of its dominion are once more identifiable. This is in accordance with the general principle mentioned in §2.4.1, that the
activation of a concept makes related concepts identifiable.