146 Francis Cornish
- That is, the selection of given constituents as bearing Topic or Focus func-
tion in terms of the wider discourse context and the assignment of these
functions to expressions conforming to the formal coding requirements at
the same level. - See Hannay (1985b) on SubTopics.
- Siewierska (1991: §§6.3.2–6.3.3) and Gómez-González (2001: §§5.2.1-
5.2.4) present critical surveys of the four types of Topic function within
standard FG. - That is, where a ‘HIGH DEIXIS’ marking might be used to introduce a ref-
erent, a ‘MID DEIXIS’ one to establish it as a topical discourse referent in
the current stretch of discourse, and subsequently a ‘LOW DEIXIS’ mark-
ing to maintain its current topicality (as long as it is not superseded by a
new referent bearing a higher claim to topic-worthiness). - Strauss (1993: 403–404), though recognizing that the three-member system
of indexical pronouns she is dealing with would normally fall within the CS
DEIXIS system, nevertheless terms it ‘FOCUS’. This terminological shift is
highly significant in the light of the discussion in Section 2.3 above. - See also the studies of the Finnish demonstratives by Östman (1995) and
Laury (1997), or of the Dutch demonstrative determiners by Maes (1996:
ch. 4). - Admittedly, the GH is an ‘implicational’ scale, so that particular forms may
move up or down the scale according to the drawing of certain implicatures
based on one or the other of Grice’s two Quantity maxims. - See also Mackenzie and Keizer (1991: 193–194), Hannay (1991: 138), and
Siewierska (1991: 162) for a similar view within standard FG. Outside FG,
see also Lambrecht (1994: 129–130, 168). Mackenzie and Keizer (1991:
194) suggest that Dik's (1997a) ‘NewTops’ should be analysed as a type of
‘Presentative Focus’ (a subtype of New or Completive Focus). Gómez-
González (2001: §5.2.4) provides a survey of published criticisms of the al-
leged topical status of so-called ‘NewTops’. - See Cornish (2002: §4) on this particular problem, presented in terms of
French examples where subject and (intransitive) verb are inverted follow-
ing a clause-initial locative satellite, and where it is the predicate corres-
ponding to the head noun of the subject term expression which is assigned
the Focus function, thereby acting as predicator (example: A l’horizon
couve un orage ‘On the horizon (there) brews/is brewing a storm’); or
where canonical subject–verb order obtains, the verb then receiving Focus
function and assuming its full lexical value as predicator for the clause (ex-
ample: A l’horizon, un orage couve ‘On the horizon, a storm is brewing’).