When similarities are motivated by contrasts. Two puzzles of Hungarian sentence structure
András Imrényi · Repository of the Academy's Library (Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) · 2020
In Hungarian generative grammar, the terms topic and focus designate structural positions associated with logico-semantic functions. The present chapter highlights the fact that elements sharing the behaviour of “topics” and “foci” are highly varied, and that logico-semantic definitions only capture prioritized subsets of the relevant data. I argue that preverbal, inversion-triggering elements (“foci” and the negative particle) are overriders, with their semantic commonality depending on relationships of contrast vis-à-vis a baseline clause type, that of neutral positive declarative clauses. With regard to sentence-initial, weakly stressed expressions (“topics” and “sentence adverbials”), I propose that they are contextualizers, generating supporting context for the processing of a message. Here, the baseline can be identified as the situation where no explicit contextualization is necessary.