Topic, Focus and Local Relevance
Topic, Focus and Local Relevance
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主题、焦点和当地相关性
DOI：
10.1007/978-94-009-8453-0_5
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发表时间：
1981
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Stechow
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Stechow
T.Reinhart(80)声称，主题信息与旧信息以及焦点信息与新信息的天真识别是不一致的。我将尝试以一种不会出现不一致的方式重建旧信息与新信息方法。我的主题信息将是乔姆斯基(71)所说的预设。句子的焦点信息是其主题信息与其内容(真值条件)之间的具体含义。焦点信息是句子等焦点结构的意义。这些概念的用处是因为它们需要如下所示。1.不同的焦点分配不影响句子的真值条件，但它负责一个句子表达不同的断言，如果它有不同的语境。2.话题是定义一个话语与另一个话语的局部关联性的一个基本概念。3.答案和疑问句之间的关系应该用局部关联性来描述。这种方法将比文献中常见的对问题的回答的关系提供更广泛的解释。4.不同焦点的否定句表达不同的断言，尽管它们具有相同的真值条件。否定是否属于焦点是有区别的。要讨论的现象不能用否定范围的不同来解释。5.我们能够解释“谁来电话，约翰还是玛丽？”这样的问题之间的区别。或者‘约翰打来的，还是玛丽打来的？’一方面，以及相应的另一个没有重点的问题，‘约翰或玛丽打电话了吗？’另一方面，本文提出的方法属于真值条件语义学。假设命题决定真值条件。但我们主张更多的东西：命题应该被视为结构化实体。它们至少应该有一个以主题为中心的结构。
T. Reinhart (80) has claimed that the naive identification of topic information with old information and of focus information with new information is inconsistent.I shall try to reconstruct the old versus new information approach in such a way that no inconsistency can arise.My topic information will be what Chomsky (71) calls presupposition. The focus information of a sentence will be the material implication between its topic information and its content (its truth-conditions). The focus-information is ‘the meaning’ of the sentencequafocus-structure.The usefulness of these concepts is illustrated because they are needed to show claims like the following.1.Different focus assignment does not affect the truth conditions of a sentence, but it is responsible for the fact that the same sentence expresses different assertions, if it has different foci.2.Topichood is one essential notion for the definition of the concept of the ‘local relevance’ of one utterance for another.3.The relation between answers and questions should be described in terms of local relevance. Such an approach will provide a much more general account of the relation of being an answer to a question than commonly found in the literature.4.Negative sentences with different foci express diffferent assertions although they have the same truth-conditions. It makes a difference whether the negation belongs to the focus or not. The phenomena to be discussed can’t be explained by differences in the scope of the negation.5.We are able to explain the difference between questions like ‘Who called, JOHN or MARY?’ or ‘Did JOHN call or did MARY call?’ on the one hand and the corresponding alternative question without focus, ‘Did John or Mary call?’ on the other hand.The approach developed in this paper belongs to truth-conditional semantics. It is assumed that propositions determine truth-conditions. But we argue for something more: Propositions should be regarded as structured entities. They should at least have a topic-focus structure.