Do contrastive topics exist?

Abstract

This paper investigates a phenomenon that has been referred to in the linguistic literature as contrastive topic. Traditionally, contrastive topic is analyzed as an independent information-structural notion that is linked to a particular interpretation and intonation. The paper, however, argues that the information-structural notion of contrastive topic is redundant and can be reduced to that of contrastive focus. The apparent dissimilarity between contrastive topics and contrastive foci is attributed to a difference in the structures that contain them rather than any particular difference between the associated information-structural notions themselves. The structures that host contrastive topics and contrastive foci are claimed to be distinct due to the nature of an additional focused element obligatorily present in the sentence. Contrastive topics and contrastive foci themselves, in contrast, are shown to be associated with identical interpretations, which results in their identical syntactic distribution, strongly suggesting that they in fact represent one and the same information-structural phenomenon in two different types of construction.

Optionality of Movement

“…22 The present analysis adopts the idea that an A 0 -moved CF adjoins to maximal projections, such as IP, vP, and VP. That contrastive XPs undergo A 0 movement in Russian follows from the observation that such XPs obligatorily reconstruct for binding and scope , Titov 2013a. Moreover, CFs can, as in (i), undergo long-distance movement, which can only target an A 0 position.…”

Intonation of Contrastive Topic in Estonian

“…[1]), or as a kind of focus (e.g. [2], [3], [4]), it is generally recognized to be intonationally different from the focus. In many languages, CT has been described as having a distinctive intonation, which tends to be similar across languages, usually consisting of a rising pitch accent and separate prosodic phrasing.…”

“…In many languages, CT has been described as having a distinctive intonation, which tends to be similar across languages, usually consisting of a rising pitch accent and separate prosodic phrasing. For example, English has been described as using an LH* pitch accent followed by an L phrase accent and an H boundary tone on the CT, and an H* pitch accent followed by an L phrase accent and boundary tone on the focus [1]; German has been reported to have an L*H accent on the CT, and an H*L accent on the focus [5], the rising accent on the CT being additionally followed by a boundary tone [6]; Hungarian CT intonation has been characterized as consisting of a brief fall followed by a long rise on the CT, and a fall on the following predicate [7]; Italian displays an H* pitch accent followed by an L boundary tone on the CT [8]; Russian is characterized by a rise in pitch on the stressed vowel of the CT, and a falling intonation on the focus [3]. However, studies that aim to verify the correspondence between CTs and the proposed intonation by examining either spontaneous or elicited data tend to find that the prosodic realization of CTs is considerably less distinctive and uniform than has been suggested; this has been observed in English [9], German [10], and Hungarian [11].…”

“…In many languages, CTs can also be marked syntactically, usually by fronting; this is the case for instance in German (e.g. [6]), Hungarian [7], and Russian [3]. Topicalization also occurs in Estonian, a language with discourse-configurational features [12].…”

Origin and structure of focus concord constructions in Old Japanese – a synthesis

“…As noted in section 2.1, in the research literature "contrastive topic" is generally not considered as a sub-type of topic but rather as a sub-type of focus (cf Gundel 1998;Gundel & Fretheim 2004;Titov 2013),. or as a combination of topic and focus(Krifka & Musan 2012).…”