11 violate the most elementary condition of relevance” Lambrecht 1994:167. It is
important to note that this scale applies only to sentences with topic-comment articulation.
2.1.3 Focus
While topics relate to referents which are already existent in the hearer’s
representation, or which are readily related to such referents, “focus,” as defined by Dooley and Levinsohn, “is that part [of an utterance] which indicates what the speaker
intends as the most important or salient change to be made in the hearer’s mental representation” 2001:29. Thus, while “topic” pertains to information which the speaker
assumes to be already shared between himself and the hearer, “focus” pertains to what he wishes to tell the hearer about the topic, so as to affect the hearer’s mental representation
of the situation. The focus contains information which is either new to the hearer or which he wishes to re-establish in the hearer’s mental representation.
Lambrecht points out that the different types of sentence articulation described in 2.1.1 differ in terms of their focus structure. Topic-comment sentences, in which the
assertion is contained in the comment or predicate, have predicate focus. Identificational sentences, in which the assertion is the identification of a certain constituent which is
missing from the listener’s mental representation of a predication, have narrow focus.
9
Presentational sentences have sentence focus. In discussing constituent ordering in Hani, I make frequent reference to these sentence articulations and focus types.
9
Although Lambrecht 1994 uses the term “argument focus,” I follow Van Valin 2005 in using the term “narrow focus.”
12
2.1.4 Point of departure and topicalization
The analysis of texts requires the assumption that speakers desire to communicate coherently, a concept which is defined by Dooley and Levinsohn as follows: “A text is
said to be
COHERENT
if, for a certain hearer on a certain hearingreading, he or she is able
to fit its different constituents into a single overall mental representation” 2001:23. Because most texts include changes of situation time and place, reference topics and
participants, and action episodes, in order to preserve coherence, it is necessary for speakers to let listeners know how to link new information with what precedes it. At
these changes or “discontinuities” Givón 1984:245, the speaker often makes explicit reference to the relationship between the information which has already been conveyed
and the information which he is about to discuss. This linking tells the listener how to join one piece of information to another in his mental representation.
Levinsohn refers to the constituents which encode such relationships as “points of departure,” defining the term as follows:
[an] element that is placed at the beginning of a clause or sentence with a dual function:
1. to provide a starting point for the communication; and 2. to cohesively anchor the subsequent clauses to something
which is already in the context. 2000:294
In the Hani text, “Not Just Me,” a lazy man is invited by two thieves to go steal from a rich man. The sentence following the invitation begins with a point of departure
which serves as a bridge between the previous information and what follows:
13 2a
Navhaoqnei aoqqivq qiq yavq,
black night
one TCL
2b aqyo
mavq loqbeq-ssaq
e laqhyul hhoheiq a 3
PL rich-man
LOC house
door DAT
lal hev.
come.up arrive
‘One black night, they arrived at the door of the rich man’s house.’
Not Just Me 3 The content of 2a forms a point of departure, informing the listener that the scene is
now changing from the time of the conversation in which the lazy man was invited, to another night. Thus, in 2, “one black night” forms the point of depature, “they” is the
topic, and “arrived at the door of the rich man’s house” is the comment about them. It is important to note that while in sentence 2, the point of departure
is not the topic of the sentence, at times a constituent functions both as a point of departure and as the topic of a sentence. For example:
3a Nyuq leivq
maq leivq
bei, think
recognize NEG
recognize EXP
3b aqkeeq e hholmol yul mol ngaoq siqluv
luvma dog
LNK body that CL
TOP millstone AUG
pievq alnei...
change ADD
‘[What happened next] was unexpected; that body of the dog’s changed into a big millstone and ...’
The Older and Younger Brothers 31 In 3b, the dog’s body is both a point of departure and the topic of the following clause
see 2.2.2.1 for discussion of the topicalizer ngaoq. It also cohesively anchors what
14 follows to the context in that it marks a switch of attention from the older brother to the
dog. The marked encoding of the reference to the dog will be treated in 4.4.2. Before ending this section, I need to compare Levinsohn’s use of the term “point
of departure” with his use of the term “topicalization” and contrast this with Lambrecht’s use of “topicalization.”
In Levinsohn’s terminology, topicalization “takes place when a constituent is
moved to the front of a sentence, so that it functions as a point of departure. In other
words, the terms ‘topicalisation’ and ‘point of departure’ indicate both the preposing of the constituent and the function of such movement” 2008:46.
Lambrecht, however, says that topicalization occurs when “a non-subject constituent is ‘topicalized’ – marked as a topic expression by being placed in the
sentence-initial position normally occupied by the topical subject” 1994:194. By this definition, the term “topicalization” is limited in application to non-subjects, and the
topicalized constituent must be the topic of the sentence. In this thesis, I follow Levinsohn’s use of the term “topicalization.”
2.1.5 Actor and undergoer
