Having seen the importance of small closed sets in accessing future topics, we should note that in some cases, a small closed set can function as a discourse topic in its own right. This is the case in the
following example. Indentation shows the paragraph structure:
Example text 19: Contrived text: “My two children” Langacker 2001a:178; last line added here
01 My two children are very different. 02 Alice is most impressive.
03 She’s clearly extremely smart. 04 She’s also energetic.
05 Now Bill, he’s more ordinary. 06 He’s not terribly active.
07 He is however quite personable. 08 They’re good kids.
Example text 19 is a paragraph about the small closed set MY TWO CHILDREN = {Alice, Bill}. It has a partitive schema. The set is not referred to as such throughout two steps, in lines 02–07, and this is long
enough for a nontopical referent to lose its active status §3.3.5. The fact that it can be referred to again in line 08 with minimal coding is a sign that it is in fact paragraph topic §3.5.2.
3.3 Sentence topics and discourse topics
The coding weight of referring expressions relates closely to the way discourse topics develop in the text. If we limit our attention to referential expressions, anything with more than minimal coding needs to
be considered carefully as possibly presenting a new or sometimes contrastive discourse topic or point of departure, hence serving an access function. In the barber interview Appendix F, this would apply to
01 Most of your new barbers today, 02 these barber colleges, 06 the tuition, 09 Young barbers today, 10 So many of them, and 11a I because of a likely sentence accent. Conversely, anything with
minimal coding needs to be considered as possibly continuing a discourse topic that has already been established on some level and is serving the integration function. This could apply to it in 07, 08, and
11b, and to they in 09 and 10. That is, topic expressions with more than minimal coding characteristically occur in the access function for some discourse unit, while expressions with minimal
coding characteristically occur in the integration function of an established discourse topic. So the difference between the two conceptual functions for discourse topics, access and integration, makes a
good start in conditioning the form of referring expressions, though it does not give a complete analysis. We take that observation as a starting point for considering sentence topics in the light from the
perspective of discourse topics.
3.3.1 Marked and unmarked topic expressions
There are different kinds of sentence utterance topics. A
MARKED TOPIC EXPRESSION
is one by which the speaker indicates, by means of its internal or external morphosytactic or prosodic signals, that
the topic is particularly informative; basically, marked topic expressions are those with more than minimal coding considering all these kinds of signals; §2.4.3. The above examples of contrastive topics,
partitive topics, and conversationally adopted topics in §3.5.2 all use marked topic expressions, most of them having a combination of fronting and secondary sentence accent. They are particularly informative
because they signal the beginning of a topic’s textual span. Marked topic expressions commonly refer to a discourse topic in the access function, commonly on micro-levels, but occasionally on higher levels as
well §2.3.2.
Formally, the higher informational salience of topics with marked expressions is reflected in formal signals that accompany salient expressions of demarcation access-orientation in general §2.3.1.
Commonly, these signals include heavier coding weight §2.4.3, own intonation contour with a secondary sentence accent, and a syntactic structure that effects a clear linear separation between the
expression and its associated “focus domain” Lambrecht 1994:214. A marked topic expression is thus a stressed element, either an NP or a free stressed pronoun. When this degree of coding weight is actually
not required for the identification of the referent, it is perceived as a signal of saliency on the discourse- pragmatic level. There is not always an actual pause between a marked topic expression and its comment;
see the right one in the example of contrast in §3.2. Furthermore, between a marked topic expression and its comment there sometimes occur particles or other elements in a
SPACER
function, such as parenthetical comments or dependent clauses. The following sentence is translated from Guarani Mbyá
Tupi-Guarani, SVO, Brazil: ‘My house, when it rains, leaks completely’. The position of the subordinate clause ‘when it rains’ between main clause subject and predicate means that the subject ‘my
house’ is a marked topic expression, indicating contrast in the original context. The fact that spacers separate components of information structure make that structure more salient Dooley 1982:322; Dooley
1990:477–483; Dooley and Levinsohn 2001, §11.5.
An
UNMARKED TOPIC EXPRESSION
is an topic expression that has no particular salience in sentence form, that is, it has minimal coding considering also syntax and prosody. Functionally, it refers to a
topic that is not there being construed as particularly informative. In Portuguese, a “pro-drop” language, a sentence such as não vou not 1sg-go ‘I’m not going’ has the subject ‘I’ as an unmarked zero topic
expression, whereas in eu não vou I not 1sg-go ‘I’m not going’, the free subject pronoun eu ‘I’ is a marked topic expression, its formal salience indicated both by its occurrence and by a secondary accent.
For unmarked topic expressions, there is rarely a one-to-one, characteristic correspondence between the topic and a particular signal, that is, between “information structure and sentence form.”
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For example, it is not unusual for direct objects to be unmarked topic expressions. In Appendix E, the referent THEIR
OWN LIQUOR is topical: 05 Back down there, they make their own liquor, you know. 06 So—we call it
moonshine. 07 Today they call it white lightnin’; but at that time we call it moonshine. In lines 06
and 07, the direct object pronoun it is an unmarked topic expression. Unmarked topic expressions refer to established discourse topics and help maintain the topic in its integration function §3.1.
Lambrecht speaks of “unmarked topic” in a somewhat different sense. According to him, it is a universal default that grammatical subjects are taken as sentence topics when that is possible. It would be
impossible, for example, if the subject is not an identifiable referent or if it is part of the focus domain Lambrecht 1994, §4.2.1.
I accept the analysis that grammatical subject is “unmarked topic” in a cross- linguistic sense, but it is important to distinguish this from the construction-specific and context-specific
unmarkedness that is referred to in this treatment and commonly elsewhere. The description of particularly salient discourse topics as having marked topic expressions and
discourse topics having unmarked topic expressions sometimes requires refinement. In certain languages, especially subject-prominent languages, the association of topic with subject leads to subject-creating
constructions, such as passive he was sent away with angry words, line 02 of “Stone soup” and possessive ‘have’ clauses he had two patients, line 11 of Example text 30, which are often used to
encode an established discourse topic Li and Thompson 1976:471. These constructions are like marked topic expressions in that they utilize special morphosyntax, but are like unmarked topic expressions in
that the topic is subject, it has no special intonational prominence, and it refers to an established discourse topic.
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Such constructions can be thought of as lying on a scale between marked and unmarked topic expressions. Functionally, they are closer to the unmarked end.
In addition to marked topic expressions, there are marked focus expressions Lambrecht 1994, §5.6, marked points of departure, etc. That is, in information structure, besides
PRAGMATIC ROLES OR FUNCTIONS
which are part of a syntagmatic configuration, there are often various
DEGREES OF SALIENCY OR HIGHLIGHTING
for their expressions. A marked expression in a particular role is one which the speaker presents as being especially informative and which occurs only in specifiable contexts
cf. Dryer 1996.
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Cf. Zeevat 2004:203: “Unlike contrastive topics and sentence topics, [established] discourse topics are not tied to intonational or syntactic phenomena in natural language. They arise in thinking about connected larger chunks of
text and dialogue.”
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Kehler 2004:233f. demonstrates that the passive subject is perceived as topical.
3.3.2 Sentence topics and discourse topics
