224 María de los Ángeles Gómez-González
whereas in the ContrFoc category, the Subject (or some other argument) is
in Focus and the predicate is within the presupposition (examples are taken
from Lambrecht and Polinsky 1997 [emphasis in original]).
(3) UTTERANCE FOCUS (UttFoc):
Context sentence: Why didn’t she come work today?
Sentence: Her SON is sick.
(4) PREDICATE FOCUS (PredFoc):
Context sentence: Why didn’t she come to work today?
Sentence: Her son had an ACCIDENT.
(5) CONTRASTIVE FOCUS (ContrFoc):
Context sentence: Why didn’t she didn’t come to work today?
Sentence: Her SON is responsible.
Of importance here is that this threefold distinction of Focus types in
terms of UttFoc, PredFoc and ContrFoc seems to fit in well with FG work,
that is, Hannay’s (1991, 1998) three message modes, i.e. Grounding, Neu-
tral and Reaction, which also attach corresponding attentional and
structural properties to these three utterance types (see Section 2.4).
2.3. The Theme zone
For compelling evidence and reasons explained in detail elsewhere
(Gómez-González 1998a, 2001), behind which is the premise that the
speaker’s choice of point of departure, or Theme, represents a strategic
move in natural language (Mackenzie 1998, 2000, this volume) giving ori-
entation or anchoring for what is to follow in the background of a
co(n)text, the Theme zone (to be underlined in the following examples)
will be taken to extend as far as an initial ‘experiential’ constituent, the ex-
periential Theme (ET), i.e. (a) Subject, (b) Process/Verb, (c) Comple-
ment/Object or (d) Circumstance – all with realizations ranging from
words, phrases to (parts of) clauses – including any (non-restrictive) post-
modification.^15 Cross-cutting illocutionary moods and Theme choices, a
thematic arrangement will be unmarked when ETs correspond to the first
element of each mood type, and it will otherwise be marked. Accordingly,
following Halliday (1994), we shall assume that in English the unmarked
Theme of declaratives is the Subject (e.g. Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep,
1994: 43),^16 the WH-element in exclamatives (e.g. how cheerfully he seems
to grin, 1994: 47), and in interrogatives, either an auxiliary (carrying the
expression of polarity) plus the Subject, in yes/no questions (e.g. can you
find me an acre of land?, 1994: 48), or the WH-element in WH-questions