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Topic Continuity in Discourse

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Topic Continuity in Discourse
AuthorTalmy Givón
LanguageEnglish
SeriesTypological Studies in Language
SubjectPragmatics
Genrenon
PublisherJohn Benjamins
Publication date
1983
Pages492
ISBN9027228671
OCLC10313658


Topic Continuity in Discourse—subtitled A Quantitative Cross Language Study—is a book edited by Talmy Givón, with contributions by himself and other experts in various languages. It is part of the series Typological Studies in Language (a supplement series to the academic journal Studies in Language) and was published by John Benjamins in 1983.

The book presents a cross-linguistic heirarchy of natural language "syntactic coding of topic accessibility" (including, for example, discourse participant prominence).[1] Givón describes the aim of the research, documented in the book, as "the rather ambitious goal ... to define, in a preliminary but cross-liguistically stable fashion, the basic principles of iconicity underlying the syntactic coding of the topic identification domain."[2]

Givón's starting point was his previously published (1978, 1979, 1981 and 1982) one dimensional scale. As listed by him, from "most continuous/accessible topic" to "most discontinuous/inaccessible topic" this was as follows.[3]

  • zero anaphora
  • unstressed-bound pronouns and grammatical agreement
  • stressed-independent pronouns
  • right-dislocated definite noun phrases (NP)
  • neutral-ordered NPs
  • left-dislocated NPs
  • Y-moved NPs (or "contrastive topicalization")
  • cleft and focus constructions
  • referential indefinite NPs

The language specific studies provided in the book are comprised of: Japanese, Amharic, Ute, Biblical Hebrew, Latin-American Spanish, written English, spoken English, Hausa, Chamorro.

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ Givón (1983): 17.
  2. ^ Givón (1983): 18, emphasis original.
  3. ^ Givón (1983): 17.

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