Expanding topics - Blogs de la UAB

Expanding topics
Elisabet Engdahl & Filippa Lindahl
{elisabet.engdahl, filippa.lindahl}@svenska.gu.se
26 October 2012
Discourse functions of topicalized pronouns
Rheme topic chain (cf. focus chaining, switch topic (Erteschik-Shir 2007))
(1)
A: N¨
ar k¨
opte du din f¨
orsta bil? (Swe.)
when bought you your first car?
B: Den k¨
opte jag 1980.
it
bought I 1980.
(2)
A: When did you buy your first car?
B: I bought it in 1950.
B’: *It I bought in 1950.
(3)
A: Quan te’l
vas
comprar, el (teu) primer cotxe? (Cat.)
when you-obj-it-obj-masc past-2s buy,
the (your) first
car?
B: Me’l
vaig
comprar el 1980.
me-it-obj-masc past-1s buy
the 1980.
Topic chain (cf. continued topic (Erteschik-Shir 2007))
(4)
Well there were two other paramedics, they were from Fagersta
demi har jag ganska bra kontakt med
them have I sort of good contact with
‘I keep in touch with them’
1
i
Left dislocation with fronted pronoun (cf. Attention shift topic (Frascarelli & Hinterh¨olzl 2007, Eide (2011))
(5)
Sometimes we got some small thing, but we didn’t have the economy to buy a
lot
b˚
atar, det i gjorde jag ju
boats it made I PRT
i
sj¨alv utav bark och tr¨ad och s˚
a d¨ar
myself out of bark and trees and such
‘boats, I made myself out of bark and trees and such’
The fronted pronoun cannot be a clitic:
(6)
Det blev en flicka
it was a girl
a. och henne i vill vi f¨
olja
and her
want we follow
‘and we want to follow her’
i
b. *och ’na i
vill vi f¨olja
and CLITIC want we follow
liksom.
PRT
i
liksom.
PRT.
Syntactic structure:
(7)
[CP hennei vill [TP vi v [VP f¨olja e i ]]]
her
want
we
follow
Table 1. Discourse functions of topicalized pronouns in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish
2
(8)
I would like to have a thermos like that (pointing to a thermos)
a. Den i synes jeg i er s˚
a flot. (Dan.)
it
think I
is so nice.
b. I think it is really nice.
c. *It, I think is really nice
d. El
trobo molt bonic. (Cat.)
it-obj-masc find-1s very nice.
(9)
What was the language here like? Has it changed?
a. Nei, det i vil jeg ikke si i . (Nor.)
no, it will I not say
b. No, I wouldn’t say so.
c. *No, so I wouldn’t say.
d. No. Jo diria
que no. (Cat.)
no. I cond-say-1s that no
(10)
Eva suggested that we should take a sauna
a. och det i var det v¨
aldigt m˚
anga som ville
i . (Swe.)
and it was it very
many that wanted
b. and there were a lot of people who wanted to do it/that.
c. *and it, there were a lot of people who wanted to do.
d. *and that, there were a lot of people who wanted to do.
(Engdahl 1982, 1997, Erteschik-Shir 1982, Lindahl 2011)
Discourse functions of topicalized clauses
(11)
The grass snakes swim faster than we do ... we never learned.
och [att vi inte
drunknade] det f¨orst˚
ar
jag inte men vi klarade oss,
and that we did not drown
it understand I not but we made it,
konstigt nog.
strangely enough.
‘I can’t understand that we didn’t drown, but we made it, strangely enough.’
(12)
... the nazis ensured that Germany was nicely and benignly turned out ... [That
the success of the eleventh Olympiad gave Hitler an enormous boost, both moral
and political,] nobody could deny. (COCA: magazine text, 2000)
3
(13)
Some of the cosmic radiation makes the air glow, so that the sky blazes with
northern lights.
Men [varifr˚
ank dessa str˚
alar kommer k ]i ¨ar det ingen som vet i
come
is there no one who knows
but from where these rays
‘But no one knows where this radiation comes from.’
(14)
There were three rusty ferris wheels which seemed to compete about which one
could drive the fastest without throwing the passengers off.
[Att h¨
alften av passagerarna
kastade upp]i var det ingen som brydde
that half
of passengers-DEF threw up
was there no one who cared
sig
om i
REFL about
‘That half of the passengers threw up, no one cared about.’
(15)
The crocodile is stuck in the mail box.
[Hurk han hamnat d¨
ar k ]i a¨r det bara han som vet i
how he ended up there is it only he who knows.
‘How he ended up there, only he knows.’
(16)
The Derby family had built it before World War I, when they presumably had
a lot more money than faculty salaries or the earnings of a sometime-editor.
[Where the family money came from]i , I didn’t know i . In my time it had always
been kept up by Derby scholars who didn’t earn much. (From COCA: fantasy
and science fiction, 2011)
(17)
In June 1997, a man fishing off the coast of the Falkland Islands was knocked
unconscious and left comatose for two days after a frozen squid landed on his
head. [How the squid got there]i nobody knows i . (From COCA: magazine text,
2012)
4
(18)
- Most types of theft started to increase in 1995, says Jan Ahlberg. And theft
continues to increase, even if not at a very high rate.
[Vadk det beror p˚
¨r det ingen som vet i .
a k ]i a
is there no one who knows
what it depends on
‘There is no one who knows why this is.’
D¨
aremot vet man att antalet misshandelsfall och v˚
aldt¨akter pl¨otsligt stoppat upp
och b¨
orjat v¨
anda.
‘However, we do know that the numbers of assault and rape suddenly have
stopped up and started to reverse.’
(19)
I found comfort in his words, even though I had just seen a mother toss her little
girl into the water, then jump in after her and disappear. [Whether Mr. Hardie
had witnessed this or not]i , I did not know i , but I suspected he had, for the
black eyes darting about beneath his heavy brows seemed to absorb every detail
of our situation. (From COCA: fiction, 2012)
Conclusions
• In Scandinavian, topicalized pronouns contribute to the cohesion of the text or
dialogue by providing smooth transitions.
• In English, unaccented pronouns cannot be topicalized; topicalization always evokes
contrast.
• Catalan uses clause internal clitic pronouns, not dislocations, to maintain cohesion.
• Topicalized clauses typically contain a pronoun or noun phrase which refers to
something just mentioned and at the same time raises a new aspect of the QUD.
• The frequent use of cohesive pronoun topicalization in Scandinavian may be a precondition for the spontaneous extractions from relative clauses found in precisely
those languages.
5
References
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Corpora
NorDiaCorp Nordic Dialect Corpus <http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/nota/scandiasyn/>
COCA Corpus of Contemporary American English <corpus.byu.edu/coca/>
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