ABSTRACT
In previous chapters I have considered separately the notions of topic and focus and I have suggested keeping a unique notion of focus and distinguishing between different types of topical elements, especially between Sentence Topic and Background. I also examined different topicalizing and focusing mechanisms such as Clitic Left-dislocation, Left-dislocation, Topicalization and Focus Preposing. However, I have not said anything about the combination of these three primitives in an articulation. As mentioned in chapter 2, several different dichotomies (Theme-Rheme, Topic-Comment, Topic-Focus and Focus-Background/ Presupposition/Open proposition) have been suggested in the literature.1 None of these dichotomies, however, distinguishes between two different topical elements.
