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

[摘要] The purpose of this study is to investigate the information structure of Biblical Hebrewnarrative, and develop accounts of topic and focus in Biblical Hebrew, respectively. Bothtopic and focus categories have been determined for Biblical Hebrew (cf. chapters 3 and 5), aswell as the information structure strategies that these categories can fulfill in discourse.For topic categories, four different categories of information structure topics in BiblicalHebrew have been distinguished. These are1. Primary topics2. Secondary topics3. Tail topics4. Topic framesIn addition, associated with topics are topic contrastiveness as well as deictic orientations ortext-world frames. All these categories, when present, are part of the topical framework of adiscourse.For focus structure categories, three different types of focus structure in Biblical Hebrew havebeen distinguished. These are:1. Predicate focus2. Sentence focus3. Argument focusAgain, like in the case of topics, contrastiveness is associated with focus structures.The strategies of information structure topics and focus structures in theme developmentswere distinguished. For topics, the following information structure strategies or functionsstand out:1. Topic continuity2. Topic promotion3. Topic shift4. Topic deictic text-world framing5. Topic contrastingFor focus structures, the following information structure strategies or functions stand out:1. Commenting on topics2. Presenting unidentifiable or inactive participants3. Reporting, that is, event-reporting and state-reporting of out-of-the-blue,unexpected, discourse new events or states. Some reporting re-directs thetheme, other reporting, especially that of states, supports the theme. 4. Identifying referents, either as identifying contrastive, unexpected referents ordeictic text-world frames, or by announcing theme macrowords.Contrastiveness is a pragmatic overlay in the case of many focus constituents, especiallypresupposed information that is focused on.In other words, the three focus structures are used in certain strategies:1. Predicate focus structures are used for commenting in topic-commentarticulations.2. Sentence focus structures are used for presentational sentences, and for themeredirectingand theme-supporting, event-reporting and state-reportingsentences. The word-order is generally marked.3. Argument focus is used for unexpected, contrastive identification, and for theannouncement of theme macrowords. The word-order is marked, similar tosentence focus structures.All the topic and focus categories and their respective information structure strategies have alink with the theme of a discourse. Theme has been defined in this study as the developingand coherent core or thread of a discourse in the mind of the speaker-author and hearerreader,functioning as the prominent macrostructure of the discourse (chapter 7 (7.4.4)).The information structure with its topics and focus structures and its strategies, can be used asa tool to identify and analyse themes. These categories and strategies together are calledtheme traces when they occur in marked syntactic constructions or in other prominenceconfigurations like relexicalisation, end-weight, and repetition of macrowords. Theme tracesare defined with the following wording: A theme trace is a clue in the surface form of adiscourse, viewed from the perspective of information structure, that points to the cognitivemacrostructure or theme of a text. This clue is in the form of (1) a marked syntacticalconfiguration, be it marked word-order or marked in the sense of explicit and seemingly'redundant, all signaling some thematic sequencing strategy, or (2) some recurringconcept(s) signaling some prominence and coherence (chapter 7 (7.5.4)).By investigating these theme traces, the analyst will have a tool to study themes in discourse.This theme traces tool will assist in the demarcation of the sections in the developing theme ofa text by means of a variety of boundary features, and once these thematic units have beenestablished, the study of the topic framework together with the focus content will yield averifiable understanding of the macrostructure of a text in Biblical Hebrew. Global themes arecontrasted with local themes. Global themes occur in the higher-level thematic groupings, likewhole narratives and smaller episodes within the narratives. Within the episodes are sub-unitslike scenes and thematic paragraphs, the smallest thematic unit. In scenes and thematicparagraphs, local themes occur.Between the different thematic units, a variety of theme sequential strategies occur. Themeshifting is a wider information structure strategy that is in operation in discourse. For instance,topic promotion, topic shift, and topic text-world framing are all cases of theme shifting. Tostudy the theme of a narrative discourse from the perspective of the information structure,four steps of a theme-tracing model have been suggested, and applied to Genesis 17.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University