access function or are contrastive. Further, the discourse topics that they realize are commonly not topics of a full discourse unit, but only belong to a micro-level, a step in a paragraph schema §2.6.2.
83
Such topics are often provisional and do not persist as topics in consolidated, macro-level discourse structure
§2.2.7. To summarize: Sentence topics are not simply parallel to discourse topics; they manifest discourse
topics in some function and at some level.
84
3.3.3 Sentences without topics
Certain sentences do not have the articulation topic-comment or comment-topic. These are called
THETIC SENTENCES
in Lambrecht 1994, §4.2.2. Lowe 2005 lists four types see Figure 13, for which a suitable context can be supplied intonation nucleus is in ALL CAPS:
Identificational sentences: THE CHILDREN wrecked the henhouse.
Event reporting sentences: The children just wrecked the HENHOUSE
Weather sentences: It’s RAINING.
Presentational sentences: There’s a PENGUIN out there in the field.
Figure 13: Thetic sentence types
• Identificational sentences are a subtype of focus-presupposition argument focus sentences, in which
the subject is the argument in focus. They are not to be confused with equative sentences of the type the car I saw in the accident was YOURS, which are of a topic-comment type.
• Event reporting sentences are a subtype of sentences with sentence focus. As in the above example,
they may have subject-predicate structure that is syntactically the same as unmarked topic-comment structure, but their subject is not a sentence topic Lambrecht 1994:136–146. In the exchange A:
What’s the matter with you? B: My NECK hurts, Lambrecht analyzes B’s reply as a thetic sentence whose subject is not a topic, but whose possessor my is a topic apparently a discourse topic. In
English, often the only formal difference between topic-comment and event reporting sentences is in their intonation. Languages such as Japanese have common morphosyntactic signals as well op. cit.,
p. 137.
• In certain languages, such as English, weather sentences may be a subtype of event reporting
sentences, often with a dummy subject Van Valin 2001:2f.. In other languages, such as Mbyá Guarani, they are a distinct type, with no subject at all Dooley 2005, §9.7.
• Presentational sentences often have, and in fact in some languages may require, an expression of time
or location, that is, an expression of orientation §2.3.1. This serves to anchor or ground the new referent §2.4.2. In the example above there is a sentence-final orientation expression. In Luke 4:33
there is a sentence-initial one, a point of departure: “And in the synagogue was a man having the spirit of an unclean demon….” Sentences that predicate absolute existence may constitute distinct
type, with less need for anchoring.
3.3.4 Sentence topics and points of departure
