Subjecthood and Topicality are both Pragmatic Issues
André Włodarczyk, Hélène Włodarczyk · 2011
Abstract. The concept of centre of attention (CA) is used in Distributed Grammar focusing on its relevance for the syntax of human languages. Based on psychological evidence, this notion captures what is common between subject, topic and theme in an integrated system of concepts rather than as a disparate collection of them. We define respectively subject as the main CA of a base utterance, topic as the main CA of an extended utterance (containing both Old and New meta-informative status) and theme as the main (composite) CA of a text/discourse. When choosing an entity or an element of the semantic situation as the CA of the utterance, a speaker creates a common ground on which it becomes possible to communicate with the addressee. 1. The problem of Subject in Logic and Grammar: Subject or Argument? In ancient logic, a proposition was considered to be composed of two terms: the subject and the predicate (SP). In Aristotle‟s metaphysics, this two-fold definition of a proposition led to the ontological interpretation: the subject is an entity (a substance) and the predicate is a property or quality (an accidence). In formal logic (since G. Frege), this two-fold schema SP has been replaced by the concept of an n-ary predicate (a relation) represented by the logical predicate