Topic/Focus articulation and intensional logic
Tomáš Vlk · 1988
A semantic analysis of topic and focus as two parts of tectogrammatical representation by means of transparent intensional logic (TIL) is presented. It is pointed out that two sentences (more precisely, their tectogrammatical representations) differing just in the topic/focus articulation (TFA) denote different propositions, i.e. that TFA has an effect upon the semantic content of the sentence. An informal short description of an algorithm handling the TFA in the translation of tectogrammatical representations into the constructions of TIL is added. The TFA algoriths divides a representation into two parts corresponding to the topic and focus; every part is analyzed (translated) in isolation and then the resulting construction is put together. The TIL construction discussed here reflect the scope of negation and some of the presuppositions observed.