Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 91

overall linking algorithm. In English word order is largely fixed, as noted
above, and accordingly variation in focus structure is indicated primarily by
variation in the placement of the main sentence stress (cf. section 2.2).
However, it was discussed in section 4.4 that English syntactic pivots are
pragmatic pivots [PrPs], and, as shown in (40)-(43), a PrP must be topical
and cannot be focal. The topic chain illustrated in (40) involves, in dis­
course-pragmatic terms, a sequence of linked predicate focus constructions
all sharing the same topic argument. Thus in English the assignment of the
syntactic function "pivot" and the pragmatic function "topic" must con­
verge on the same argument in order for there to be a PrP in a clause. In
Russian, on the other hand, not only are there PrPs as in English, but the
actual form of the sentence is also much more directly influenced by the
focus structure of the utterance. Hence despite the differences between the
two types of language, the assignment of the discourse-pragmatic functions
of topic and focus must be part of the overall linking algorithm in their
grammar. Thus we must add to Figures 16 and 22 the additional step of the
assignment of the discourse-pragmatic functions of topic and focus. This
may be instantiated as follows. As part of the focus structure projection,
each of the elements represented (arguments and nuclei) is assigned one of
these functions, yielding the various focus constructions introduced in sec­
tion 2. In English these contrasts are indicated primarily (but not exclu­
sively) by intonation, whereas in Russian they affect both intonation and
word order. These assignments must fall within the potential focus domain
[PFD] of the clause, which is maximally bounded by the scope of the IF
operator, as shown in sections 2.4, 2.5. In (78a), for example, the WH-
word kto "who" is assigned focus, and the other elements topic, since the
unmarked WH-question is a narrow focus construction. The focus structure
for this utterance is the same as that presented in Figure 13 for an English
WH-question, and therefore kto must be in clause-initial position followed
by the topical elements. The declarative reply is also a narrow focus con­
struction, and therefore the ordering topic-focus is imposed, yielding the
word order in the answer. Note that in the English equivalent the word
order is unaffected but the pivot NP would receive the main sentence stress.
It was mentioned in section 4.4 that not all languages have PrPs (see
FVV, Foley & Van Valin 1985, Van Valin 1987b), and yet these focus con­
structions are found in all languages. Therefore the place of pragmatic func­
tion assignment in the linking algorithm must be different in languages with
PrPs from its place in those without them. In particular, in languages which