📄 From information structure, topic and focus, to theme in Biblical Hebrew

What it is about

Not read: the PDF could not be fetched. From the title and the dissertation's known place in the literature (it is a standard reference on Hebrew information structure, built on Lambrecht's theory): Floor distinguishes topic (what a clause is about) from focus (the new, asserted part), uses Lambrecht's three focus types (predicate focus, argument focus, sentence focus), and explains the pre-verbal position in Hebrew as the slot for a topic switch or for a narrow (argument) focus. He then builds up from clause topics to the theme of a stretch of text. Check every point against the text.

Ideas

• I1. (to check) For every Torah clause with a constituent before the finite verb, label the fronted item as topic switch (it was mentioned before and the subject changes) or argument focus (new or contrastive); compute the two shares.
• I3. (to check) A paragraph "theme" as the most frequent topic referent across its clauses; compare with Masoretic paragraph division.

For Mova

• I2. (to check) Add Lambrecht's focus types as a column in prag.tsv: predicate focus for the default VS clause, argument focus for X-V with a contrast, sentence focus for presentational clauses (וְהִנֵּה, וַיְהִי …).

I1–I2 apply to tools/macula/src/prag.rs (a new column) and to languages/hbo/08-syntax.md (word order) and 09-discourse.md; I3 to the paragraph section of 09-discourse.md. Re-read once the PDF is in.

Topics🕎 Hebrew & Aramaic🐪 Semitic languages

Cite

Cite as Sebastiaan Jonathan Floor. 2004. From information structure, topic and focus, to theme in Biblical Hebrew. SUNScholar (Stellenbosch University).

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@inproceedings{floor2004information,
  title = {{From information structure, topic and focus, to theme in Biblical Hebrew}},
  author = {Sebastiaan Jonathan Floor},
  booktitle = {SUNScholar (Stellenbosch University)},
  year = {2004},
  url = {https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/1270}
}

This page in Markdown → https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/floor-2004-information-structure-topic-focus-theme/