Topic continuity in discourse : a quantitative cross-language study / edited by T. Givon.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Givón, Talmy, 1936-

Series:

Typological studies in language ; v. 3.

Typological studies in language, 0167-7373 ; v. 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Discourse analysis.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Topic and comment.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (498 p.)

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : J. Benjamins, 1983.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The functional notion of "topic" or "topicality" has suffered, traditionally, from two distinct drawbacks. First, it has remained largely ill defined or intuitively defined. And second, quite often its definition boiled down to structure-dependent circularity. This volume represents a major departure from past practices, without rejecting both their intuitive appeal and the many good results yielded by them. First, "topic" and "topicality" are re-analyzed as a scalar property, rather than as an either/or discrete prime. Second, the graded property of "topicality" is firmly connected with sensi

Contents:

Topic continuity in discourse, an introduction / T. Givon

Topic continuity in Japanese / J. Hinds

Topic continuity in written Amharic narrative / M. Gasser

Topic continuity and word-order pragmatics in Ute / T. Givón

Topic continuity in Biblical Hebrew narrative / A. Fox

Topic continuity and discontinuity in discourse / P. Bentivoglio

Topic continuity in written English narrative / C. Brown

Topic continuity in spoken English / T. Givon

Some dimensions of Topic-NR continuity in Hausa narrative / P. Jaggar

Topic continuity and the voicing system of an ergative language / A. Cooreman.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographies and index.

ISBN:

1-283-31420-7

9786613314208

90-272-8025-8

OCLC:

756484662