ABSTRACT
Aconstraintthatwehavebarelyalludedtoso farisonewhichsortstheinformationina particularutteranceintothatwhichisalreadyin memoryandthatwhichispresentedforinclusion. Thenotionofabasic"psychological"divisionof sentencesinto"whatthesentenceisabout",and "whatissaidaboutthis"isanideaofsome venerabilityinlinguistics.Inabasic,unmarked sentence-type,thedivisioncorrespondstothe fundamentaldivisionofSubject/Predicate,the SubjectcorrespondingtotheTopic,andthe PredicatetotheComment 1-atleastinasimplified world.Butasweshallsee,anumberofphenomena appeartointervenebetweenthispictureand reality:notablyContrastandmovement.Infact,we willseethatthesephenomenaareintimatelybound upwiththetopic-commentnotion,whichitself generalisestheideasofemphasiswhichwehave developedintheprecedingchapters.
