Journal of Pragmatics 9 (1985) 83-107 North-Holland

83

SHARED KNOWLEDGE AND TOPICALITY

Jeanette K. GUNDEL *

The shared knowledge often associated with specific linguistic forms, such as definite descrip- tions, cleft constructions and specific intonation contours is shown to be a function of the role of these constructions in encoding the topic-comment structure of a sentence. It is argued that this explains certain properties of the relation between shared knowledge and linguistic form, in particular: (1) why shared knowledge is associated with some forms and not with others; (2) why shared knowledge is not consistently associated even with these forms; and (3) why what is assumed to be shared is familiarity with a discourse entity and not necessarily belief in the truth of a corresponding proposition.

1. Introduction

A great deal of attention has been devoted to the problem of explicating differences in the interpretation of pairs of sentences like those in (la,b)-(4a,b).

(la) The news conference was (not) held yesterday. (lb) A news conference was (not) held yesterday. (2a) What holds the cells together is (not) a molecular glue. (2b) A molecular glue holds/does not hold the cells together. (3a) Was it my mother who called? (3b) Did my mother call? (4a) The cat scratched the dog. (4b) The cat scratched the dog.

It is generally recognized that a speaker who utters the (a) sentences in (la, b)-(4a, b) will be understood as taking certain aspects of the meaning of these sentences for granted. However, these same aspects of meaning will be under-

* An earlier and shorter version of this paper was presented at the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists Workshop on Shared Knowledge in Language Use and Communication, Tokyo, August 1982.

I would like to thank the participants for their comments. I am also grateful to Deborah Dahl, John Hinds, and Gerald Sanders for their comments and suggestions.

84 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

stood as part of what is asserted or questioned in the corresponding sentences in (b).

A number of terms and concepts have been invoked to account for this distinction. These include given vs. new information (e.g., Halliday (1967) Kuno (1972) Chafe (1976) Clark and Haviland (1977)); presupposition, both logico-semantic and pragmatic (e.g., Strawson (1952) Chomsky (1971) Keenan (1971) Hutchinson (1971) Karttunen (1974) Gazdar (1979)); conversational implicature (e.g., Kempson (1975)); conventional implicature (Karttunen and Peters (1979)) and ordered entailment (Wilson and Sperber (1979)). However, none of these has been completely satisfactory. 2

My purpose in this paper is to demonstrate that an adequate account of the difference in interpretation between the (a) and (b) sentences in (la, b)-(4a, b) follows from independently needed principles governing the form and function of topic-comment structure in natural language. Such an account, moreover, also explains corresponding differences in conditions under which these sentences can be appropriately used. The problem of accounting for the distinctions in question thus reduces to the problem of explicating the relation between topic-comment structure and linguistic form.

I will begin in section 2 by distinguishing two definitions of topic, one pragmatic and one structural. In section 3, I establish a pragmatic precondition for topichood, the topic-familiarity principle, which serves as the basis for a connection between topicality and the facts at issue here. In section 4, two structural properties of topic are discussed which, taken in conjunction with the topic-familiarity principle, make it possible to explain when the meaning associated with a particular part of a sentence is taken as a background assumption and when it is part of the new information being asserted, questioned, and so on. The form that such an explanation might take is outlined in section 5. Some advantages of the proposed explanation, and some specific advantages over the ordered entailment model proposed in Wilson an Sperber (1979) will be discussed in section 6.

2. Pragmatic topic and syntactic topic

The idea that topic--comment structure should be related to the facts at issue here is not new. A proposal along these lines was first developed by Strawson (1964) who suggested that definite descriptions presuppose the existence of their referents only in those cases where the referent is what the sentence (or rather the statement made by the sentence) is about, i.e., where it is the topic of the sentence. Despite its intuitive appeal, however, this idea has not been

Excellent summaries of arguments against these various analyses can be found in Gazdar (1979) and Levinson (1983).

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicaliry 85

widely accepted. It has either been ignored completely in most of the vast literature on this topic or it has been explicity rejected (cf. Kempson (1975) and Fodor (1979)). 3 One reason for this, no doubt, has been the terminologi- cal confusion and conceptual unclarity associated with the notion topic itself. Since the publication of Strawsons work the problem of providing a more rigorous definition of this notion has received a considerable amount of attention in the literature (cf. for example Sgall, HajiEova and BeneSova (1973), DaneS (1974), Gundel (1974) Bates (1976), Reinhart (1982)). A good deal of research has also been devoted to the interaction of topic-comment structure with formal properties of individual languages (Dahl(1969) Kuno (1972,1976), Gundel (1978a,1978b,1980), Li and Thompson (1976) Bak (1977) Given (1979a), Dooley (1982) Erkii (1983) Dahl (1984), to mention only a few). 4 While many questions still remain unanswered, a number of important gener- alizations have emerged from these works.

Although the definition of topic is far from being a settled issue, most authors seem to agree that its primary function is to establish the relevance of an utterance. It is, in the words of Strawson (1964: 104) what is of current interest or concern and, in this sense, it is what the sentence (or more precisely the speech act) is about. 5 Disagreement concerning the notion centers mainly around its various structural and pragmatic properties, for example whether it always represents given or shared information, whether it is always sentence initial, and so on.

A necessary first step towards a more rigorous treatment of the notion topic in linguistic description is to separate a functional definition of this concept from various pragmatic and structural properties which might be correlated with it. A determination of such properties thus becomes an empirical question (see Sanders and Wirth (1985) for some discussion of this point). I will make a distinction here between pragmatic topic, a relation that

3 Kempsons arguments are addressed exclusively at Strawsons attempt to relate topicality to truth value, specifically his claim that presupposition failure results in a truth value gap if the expression which fails to refer is the topic. Thus, for example, Kempson maintains that this position is untenable because truth value would now no longer be a relation between a statement and a state of affairs but between a speaker, a statement and a state of affairs and thus, if meaning is defined as a set of truth conditions, sentences could no longer be said to have meaning independent of the context in which they are spoken. Whether or not one considers this to be a compelling argument against an association of presupposition and topicality depends of course on ones views concerning the proper definition and description of meaning in natural language. In any case, the argument does not apply to the proposal put forward in the present work since background assumptions are not described here in terms of truth conditions.

Deans arguments against Strawsons position will be discussed in section 4. 4 A review and bibliography of earlier work in this area can be found in Dane5 (1974). 5 Agreement on this characterization of the function of topic appears to be independent of terminological differences. Thus, a similar characterization is given by Halliday (1967) and Kuno (1972) for the concept these authors refer to as theme.

86 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

holds between a speaker and a sentence relative to a context, as defined in (5) and syntactic topic, a relation that holds between a constituent and a sentence which contains that constituent, and which is defined directly on syntactic structures, as in (6).

(5) Pragmatic Topic. Def.: An entity, E, is the pragmatic topic of a sentence, S, iff S is intended to increase the addressees knowledge about, request information about or otherwise get the addressee to act with respect to E.

(6) Syntactic Topic. Def.: A constituent, C, is the syntactic topic of some sentence, S, iff C is immediately dominated by S and C is adjoined to the left or right of some sentence S which is also immediately dominated by S.

I will assume further that the referent of a syntactic topic is always a pragmatic topic, but that the converse is not true. An expression which refers to the pragmatic topic of a sentence thus may, but does not necessarily occur in a syntactic position reserved for topics. In fact, a pragmatic topic does not have to have direct expression in the sentence at all. * Unless otherwise specified, the term topic in this paper will refer to pragmatic topic as defined in (5).

I assume then that part of the successful interpretation of any natural language utterance involves distinguishing between what the speaker intends to communicate something about (the topic) and what is actually communicated, i.e., asserted, questioned, requested, and so on, with respect to this thing (the comment). It is reasonable to assume, moreover, that this distinction de- termines how an addressee will assess and store information contained in an utterance. Thus, as Reinhart (1982) suggests, information introduced in a given discourse is not stored as lists of unrelated propositions. Rather, it is classified under referential entries that correspond to topics.

3. The topic-familiarity principle

A common, though by no means uncontroversial assumption concerning pragmatic preconditions for topichood is that the topic must be chosen from

6 Although the definition of pragmatic topic given in (5) is similar to the definition of sentence topic given in Reinhart (1982), the extensions of the two notions are not identical since Reinhart restricts what she calls sentence topic to expressions in the sentence. This restriction seems inappropriate, however, given that Reinhart considers sentence topic (as well as what she calls discourse topic) to be a pragmatic concept. Whether or not a particular pragmatic concept has direct expression in any given sentence should be an empirical question. I intend this definition to hold at the level of surface syntactic structure. Whether or not it also applies at a more abstract level of representation (cf. Gundel(1974), Chomsky (1977)) is a question I will not be concerned with here. * See Gundel (1974) for some justification of this claim.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 87

information which is in some sense already given or shared by speaker and addressee (cf. Mathesius (1928) Kuno (1972), Sgall, HajiCova and BeneSova (1973) Gundel (1974)). This assumption actually embodies two separate claims, stated in (7) and (8).

(7) Topic-Identifiability Principle An expression, E, can successfuly refer to a (pragmatic) topic, T, iff E is of a form that allows the addressee to uniquely identify T.

(8) Topic-Familiarity Principle An entity, E, can successfuly serve as a topic iff both speaker and addressee have previous knowledge of or familiarity with E.

The distinction between these two principles is especially important for the purpose of the present work since an expression can satisfy a uniqueness or identifiability condition even if the entity it refers to does not satisfy a familiarity condition. However, previous knowledge of or familiarity with some entity necessarily implies ablity to uniquely identify it, given an appropriate description. Thus, for example, the addressee could uniquely identify the referent of the dog in sentence (9) without having any previous knowledge that the speakers neighbor has a dog. However, if the addressee did have such knowledge, this would guarantee identifiability.

(9) I didnt get much sleep last night because the dog next door kept me awake.

This point will be discussed further in section 5. Given that the topic is what the speaker intends to communicate something

about and that information conveyed by a sentence will be assessed and stored in relation to the topic, it is reasonable to assume that an utterance will be felicitous only if the addressee can uniquely identify the topic either from the discourse context (linguistic or extralinguistic) or on the basis of some expres- sion in the sentence itself. There is, in addition, empirical evidence from a number of different and unrelated languages that an expression which refers to the topic must be definite or generic, i.e., it must be an expression which allows the addressee to uniquely identify the referent and thus distinguish it from all other objects. First, it has been observed (cf. Kuno (1972) Gundel (1974), Li and Thompson (1976), Schachter (1976)) that in languages which have overt topic markers (e.g., Japanese, Tagalog) a noun phrase can receive such a marker only when its referent is definite or generic. 9 Second, as shown in

9 I assume here, following Kempson (1975) and others, that identifiability by the addressee, unlike familiarity, is part of the conventional meaning of definite (including generic) referring expres-

sions.

88 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicalrty

Gundel (1974) topicalized ia and dislocated NPs (whose referents are always pragmatic topics) must have definite or generic reference. This is illustrated by the following examples from English.

(104 (lob) (1Oc) (104 (114 (lib) (llc) (114 (lie) (llf) (124 (12b) (12c) (124

I bought the printer. (As for) the printer, I bought it. I bought it, the printer. The printer, I bought. I bought a certain printer. (As for) a (*certain) printer, I bought one. I bought one, a (*certain) printer. *(As for) a printer, I bought it. *I bought it, a printer. A (*certain) printer, I bought. I bought something. *(As for) something, I bought it. *I bought it, something. *Something, I bought.

As was noted above, previous knowledge or familiarity implies identifiability (given an appropriate description). Thus, the facts in (lOa-d)-(12a-d) also provide indirect support for the claim that the topic must be some entity already familiar to both speaker and addressee, since these facts would follow automatically from such an assumption. The facts in (lOa-d)-(12a-d) can not be taken as providing strong support for the topic-familiarity principle, how- ever, since they would also follow from the weaker claim that topics must be identifiable. Some additional support for the stronger assumption comes,

lo The terms

Beans I like. How do you feel about beans?

(ii) Beans I like.

As can be seen here, these two types of sentences are appropriate in different discourse contexts. Since it is only in sentences like (ii) that the sentence initial object functions as the topic of the sentence (1 would maintain this is true for both pragmatic and syntactic topic) it is somewhat misleading to use the term topicalized to refer to both structures. I use the term here to refer only to structures like (ii), where the sentence initial NP does not have the primary stress in the sentence.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 89

however, from at least two other areas. First, psycholinguistic experiments (e.g., Hornby (1972)) have suggested that speakers interpret what the sentence is about as corresponding to that aspect of the meaning of a sentence which is in some sense already assumed or taken for granted. Second, if the function of topic is to establish the relevance of an utterance, i.e., to hook it up to the context in some way, this would be most easily accomplished if the addressee is already familiar with the topic. Previous familiarity would also seem to be a normal precondition for the addressee to successfuly assess and store informa- tion relative to some topic. Thus, there appears to be ample evidence in favor of adopting at least the topic-identifiability principle and probably the stronger topic-familiarity principle as well.

Despite the arguments presented above, a number of authors have denied any absolute connection between topicality and shared knowledge, or even between topicality and identifiability, maintaining instead that topics obey these conditions only in the most frequent or unmarked case. For some authors, this is not even taken to be an empirical question. It is simply accepted without argument because it is necessitated by other theoretical assumptions, for example the claim that the topic (or theme) is always sentence initial (e.g., Halliday (1967) Chomsky (1965), Allerton (1978)) or that all sentences must have overtly expressed topics (e.g., Firbas (1964)). However, other researchers, most notably Reinhart (1982) have adduced a number of empirical as well as theoretical arguments against the position that topics are necessarily chosen from shared information. The most compelling of these involves the grammaticality of sentences like those in (13)-(16) where the dislocated NP is a specific indefinite and thus refers to some entity not assumed to be uniquely identifiable by (and therefore also not previously familar to) the addressee.

(13) A daughter of a friend of mine, she got her BA in two years. (14) A guy I know, well our principal caught him smoking in the john and

called the police. (Margretta (1977, ch. 3)) (15) An old preacher down there, they augered under the grave where his wife

was buried. (Prince, p. 74, in this issue)

Further evidence that the topic-familiarity principle may be too strong comes from examples like the following.

(16) Chris Zupetz went to work as a secretary last week under a new $70 million, state-subsidized emergency jobs program.

(17) Larry White, president of L.V. White and Sons Construction Manage- ment, her boss, is one of the first private employers to take advantage of the program. (First two sentences from an article in the Minneapolis Tribune, September 18, 1983.)

90 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

Since topics are not always overtly marked in English, it is not possible to determine absolutely whether the subjects of these sentences are also intended to be their topics. Intuitively, however, it seems that they are. Yet it is clear in each case that the addressee is not expected to have any previous familiarity with the referent.

Because of facts like those in (13)-(17) Reinhart concludes that shared knowledge cannot be a necessary condition for topichood. I2 She proposes instead a weaker condition which requires that topics be referential. If the term referential is being used here in the purely semantic sense to describe any expression the existence of whose referent is entailed by the sentence, the so-called specific or wide-scope existential reading for indefinites, then the condition of referentiality is clearly too weak as it would not account for any of the ungrammatical examples in (lla-f) and (12a-d). Even if referential is being used in a pragmatic sense here to mean any NP whose referent the speaker is actually intending to refer to (as opposed to simply asserting that the set of which it is a member is not empty), I3 the condition is still too weak. Although the pragmatically referential interpretation is not preferred for examples like those in (lla-f) and (12a-d), it is still a possible interpretation. Yet these sentences do not appear to be acceptable on any reading. Further- more, forcing an interpretation which is semantically and pragmatically refer- ential by adding modifiers like certain or particular does nothing to improve these examples (but see Margretta (1977) for a different view). I repeat the relevant examples here for convenience.

(18a) *A certain printer, Mary bought it. (18b) *Mary bought it, a certain printer. (l&c) *A certain printer, Mary bought.

Thus, while referentiality is clearly a necessary condition for topichood, it is not a sufficient one. If we abandon the topic-familiarity, or even the topic- identifiability principle in favor of a weaker condition that the topic expression must be referential, we can account for examples like (13)-(17). However, a

It was pointed out to me by a participant at the Tokyo conference that when similar sentences appear in Japanese newspapers the subject receives the topic marker wa even though the reader is not expected to have previous familiarity with its referent. * Reinharts other arguments against the claim that topics must be chosen from shared knowledge are less convincing since they fail to distinguish different senses in which the terms given information and new information have been used. For example, she argues that the claim that topics are always given, and comments are always new would lead to a contradiction in the case of sentences like Felix praised kimserf where topic and comment have the same referent. This argument dissolves, however, once it is recognized that newness as it applies to comments is not a property of the referent but a relation between topic and comment uis b uis some cognitive state of the addressee (see Gundel (1979) for further discussion). I3 See Fodor and Sag (1982) for more detailed discussion of the notion referential.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 91

range of other facts which follow automatically from the topic-familiarity principle (given the assumption that syntactic topics are- always pragmatic topics) remain unexplained. In light of the discussion above, I would like to propose that the topic-familiarity principle be maintained with the provision that it can be suspended, under certain conditions. This position seems justified for a number of reasons.

First, sentences with topics that refer to non-familiar entities appear to be restricted in their distribution to certain types of sentences. Thus, while left dislocation of a specific indefinite is sometimes acceptable, as in (13)-(15), the same is not true for right dislocation, as in (19) and (20) or topicalization, as in

(21).

(19) *She got her BA in two years, a daughter of a friend of mine. (20) *The principal caught him smoking in the john, a guy in our school. (21) *A guy in our school the principal caught smoking in the john.

Furthermore, while dislocation is not in general restricted to any particular type of speech act, dislocated topics whose referents are not already familiar to both speaker and addressee are restricted to assertions. Compare

(22a) That guy in your school, did the principal catch him smoking in the john?

(23b) *A guy in your school, did the principal catch him smoking in the john? (23a) That guy in your school, call him up. (23b) *A guy in your school, call him up.

Finally, it appears that even in those cases where the referent of the topic expression is not uniquely identifiable or familiar to the addressee, the topic expression is grounded in some entity that is identifiable and familiar, i.e., it is usually the case that some explicit or implicit modifier of the topic NP has definite or generic reference. Compare, for example, mine in (13) and down there in (15). l4

Thus, although facts like those in (13)-(17) appear at first to argue in favor of abandoning the topic-familiarity and topic-identifiability principles in favor of some weaker alternative, when a wider range of data is taken into account, a theory which incorporates these principles as well as certain conditions under which they can be suspended, appears to be preferable. I would like to claim then that examples like (13)-(17) are exceptional cases where the speaker

I4 See Erkii (1983) for similar observations about indefinite topics in Turkish.

92 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicaliiy

knows the addressee is not in a position to assess the truth or falsity of the assertion uis b uis the topic, since the latter is not uniquely identifiable, but he expects him to behave at least temporarily as if he could. When we consider that the conditions in question are pragmatic rather than grammatical, this situation is not a surprising one. It is well known that pragmatic conditions, unlike grammatical ones, can be suspended in special uses of language and for the purpose of achieving a special purpose or effect, without any resulting infelicity. Thus, for example, the condition that the use of a definite pronoun will be felicitous only if its referent is activated (cf. Chafe (1976) Gundel (1978b)) i.e., if the speakers and addressees attention is focused on the referent, is typically suspended in news writing or in fiction when stories begin in media res. Moreover, suspension of the topic-familiarity principle, like suspension of other pragmatic conditions, appears to be restricted to special uses of language. Left dislocation is found only in casual, informal speech, and examples like those in (15) and (17) appear to be restricted to news writing and fiction.

To conclude this section, we have established that the topic of a speech act will normally be some entity that is already familiar to both speaker and addressee. The meaning of that part of a sentence which refers to the topic will therefore be interpreted as taken for granted in some sense and the existence of the referent of such an expression will not be part of what is actually asserted, questioned, etc. by the sentence. In the next two sections, I will show how this connection between topicality and familiarity can be used to predict when the meaning of a particular linguistic form is interpreted as a background assump- tion of the sentence.

4. Some structural properties of topic

Since the topic-familiarity principle expresses a pragmatic condition on topics, one which follows from general principles of successful communication, we assume that it is universal, i.e., it holds for all human languages. Structural properties of topics, on the other hand, differ across languages. For example, as Li and Thompson (1976) have argued, languages can be classified as relatively more or less topic-prominent, depending on the importance of the topic-comment relation in determining surface syntactic structure. Topic-comment relations can also be marked in a variety of different ways

I5 The possibility of suspending the topic-familiarity principle in assertions but not in questions or commands (as illustrated by examples (22) and (23)) is no doubt related to the fact that assessment by the addressee is essential in order for successful communication to take place with questions and commands, but not with assertions. Even in the case of assertions, however, a discourse where the addressee could never assess the truth of the comment ois 6 uis the topic would be highly uncooperative.

.I. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 93

across languages. Some languages, e.g., Japanese and Korean, have special particles which mark a constituent as topic. Other languages, French for example, rely primarily on syntactic constructions, like clefts and dislocated sentences, which make the distinction between topic and comment structurally explicit. In many languages, English and Russian, for example, position of sentence stress is the primary marker of topic-comment relations. Word order variation (e.g., in Russian, Turkish), various subject-creating constructions (e.g., in English), topicalization and dislocation (e.g., in English, Russian) also serve this purpose. Despite these differences, however, there appear to be a number of universals and universal tendencies relating topic-comment struc- ture to linguistic form across languages. I will briefly review here two such structural properties of topics which are relevant to the present work.

4.1. Topic and sentence stress

If position of sentence stress is used to mark topic-comment relations in a language, then the primary stress always falls within that part of the sentence which expresses the comment.

Although the universality of this relationship between topic-comment struc- ture and sentence stress must be stated with some caution, it nevertheless seems to hold in a large number of languages (cf. Gundel (1974,1978a), Schmerling (1975), Erku (1983), Kiss (1979)). Thus, for example, the following pragmatically equivalent sentences in English and Turkish both have stress on the same constituent even though the word order is different. (Both sentences would be appropriate responses to a question about where Sybil went, for example.)

(24) Sybil went to the movies. (25) Sibil sinima-ya git-ti

movies-Dat. go-past Sibil went to the movies.

If we assume that stress is a conventional means of calling the addressees attention to some particular part of a sentence as being more important than the others, then this correlation between stress assignment and topic-comment structure is of course not surprising. The speaker will always want to draw the addressees attention to the comment, since this contains the main point of the utterance and is always new information in relation to the topic. A speaker may, under certain conditions, also want to call attention to the topic, for example if it is a new topic, i.e., when there is a topic shift, or if the topic is being explicitly contrasted with some other topic in the discourse. However, since it is often the case that the addressees attention is already focused on the topic, the latter does not have to be stressed (see Gundel (1978a) for more detailed discussion). It follows then that an expression which refers to the topic

94 J.K. Gundel / Shared knowledgeand topicalrty

will often be unstressed, and it will never receive the only stress in the sentence. It must be noted, however, that position of stress alone is not sufficient to

uniquely determine the topic of an English sentence. It can only be used to delimit the range of possible topics (and thus establish which expressions in the sentence can not refer to the topic). Consider, for example, (26) and (27) with so-called neutral stress on the final stressed word in the sentence.

(26) The King of France visited the exhibition. (27) The King of France gave me this gold plated cake knife.

Fodor (1979) cites these sentences as evidence against Strawsons (1964) position that statements whose topic expression fails to refer lack a truth value. She notes a similarity between Strawsons concept of topic and the analysis of presupposition (vs. focus) proposed in Chomsky (1971). She then goes on to argue (1979: 212) that Strawsons analysis would make incorrect predictions about (26) and (27) since these sentences clearly strike one as false. Fodors argument is invalid, however, since it is based on the erroneous assumption that sentences with so-called neutral intonation are necessarily interpreted as being about their subjects. While it is true that with neutral, sentence final stress these sentences both have an interpretation where the subject is also the topic, such sentences can also have an interpretation where the whole sentence is the comment and there is therefore no expression in the sentence which refers to the topic (or put in Chomskys (1971) terms, the whole sentence is focus and the presupposition is simply that something happened or is the case). Thus, contrary to Fodors claims, the fact that (26) and (27) strike one as false rather than lacking a truth value is not inconsistent with Strawsons analysis since both sentences can have an interpretation where the expression which fails to refer, i.e., the King of France, is not interpreted as the topic. l6

4.2. Topic and word order

If there is a syntactic position in the sentence that is reserved for topics, then this will be sentence initial or both sentence initial and sentence final. There appears to be some correlation, moreover, between sentence-initial position and new, not yet established topics and sentence final position and old, already activated topics (cf. Creider (1975) Given (1979) Tomlin and Rhodes (1979), Fuller (1981) Erku (1983)) where the term activated is used to refer to some entity that both speaker and addressees attention is already focused on (see Gundel (1978a)).

I6 For reasons which are still poorly understood, the all comment interpretation is highly unlikely in sentences with definite subjects and certain one-place stative predicates. These include sentences like the well known example The presenf King of France is bald. The difficulty (if not impossibility) of interpreting such sentences as all comment has also been noted by Kuno (1972) for Japanese.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 95

Whether or not an expression whose referent is the topic of a sentence will consistently occupy some syntactic position reserved for topics depends on the relative topic-prominence of the language in question (see Li and Thompson (1976)). In a highly topic-prominent language like Japanse, for example, topics are always sentence initial or final (though not all sentence initial or final constituents are topics, see Kuno (1972)). On the other hand, in English, which is relatively low in topic-prominence, topic-comment relations do not uniquely determine syntactic form and syntactic form uniquely determines interpreta- tion of topic-comment relations only in a relatively small number of construc- tions (namely those which have syntactic topics as defined above). Thus, sentence initial or final position is neither necessary nor sufficient for interpre- tation of topics in English. Compare, for example, the sentences in (28a-d) below all of which are equally about the individual named Mary.

(28) What about Mary? Mary (28a) I havent seen her

1 i for weeks.

Mav Wb) Her

( I , I havent seen for weeks.

(28~) Noone has seen Mary

t ) her , for weeks.

Mary (284 She

( ) hasnt been seen for weeks.

Nevertheless, there appears to be a strong tendency even in English for topics to occur in sentence initial positon. This is especially true in written language, where variation in sentence stress is not available as a means of marking topic-comment relations. In addition to uniquely topicalizing constructions such as dislocation and topicalization, various subject-creating processes such as passivization, subject-to-subject, raising and object-to-subject raising are available in English for placing a topic in sentence initial position by making it a subject. i Thus, assuming that it is not preceded by another constituent and that it meets necessary conditions for topichood, such as definiteness and lack of primary stress, the subject of a sentence is most likely to be interpreted as its topic in English.

4.3. Syntactic form and topic-comment structure in English; some generalita- tions

Given the two structural properties of topics discussed above, a description that relates surface forms in English to their possible topic-comment interpre-

I7 It has been suggested (cf. Mathesius (1928)) that the occurrence of such constructions in English can be attributed to the fact that word order varation is highly restricted and thus not available for placing topics in sentence initial position.

96 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicaliry

tations will have to accommodate at least the following facts.

I A syntactic topic (as defined in (6) above) will always be interpreted as the pragmatic topic.

II An NP in the sentence which refers to the pragmatic topic will normally be either definite or generic.

This follows from the topic-familiarity principle, more specifically, from the fact that this principle entails the principle of topic-identifiability and the fact that a definite NP is a conventional means of signalling that the addressee is expected to be able to identify the referent. (Note, however, that it does not follow from this that all definite NPs will be topics. This is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.)

III An expression which carries the primary stress cannot refer to the topic; it will always be part of the comment of the sentence.

IV The most likely interpretation is one in which the subject of the sentence refers to the topic, i.e., assuming that the subject is sentence initial and that it does not have some property, e.g., primary stress or indefiniteness, which makes it ineligible for topichood.

5. Towards an explanation of background assumptions

Given the facts described in I-IV above and the topic-familiarity principle established in the previous section, we are now able to explain why certain aspects of the meaning of the sentences in (la-f)-(4a-b) are interpreted as background assumptions in the (a) sentences, but as part of what is being asserted or questioned in the corresponding (b) sentences. I repeat these sentences here for convenience.

(la) The news conference was (not) held yesterday. (lb) A news conference was (not) held yesterday. (2a) What holds the cells together is (not) a molecular glue. (2b) A molecular glue holds/does not hold the cells together. (3a) Was it my mother who called? (3b) Did my mother call? (4a) The cat scratched the dog. (4b) The cat scratched the dog.

The noun phrase the news conference in (la) meets the necessary conditions for topichood, i.e., it is definite and does not have primary stress. Since it is also in subject position, it is most likely to be interpreted as referring to the topic.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 91

Thus, given the topic-familiarity principle, the referent of this noun phrase is assumed to be some entity already familiar to the addressee, and the existence of the news conference in question will not be interpreted as part of what is asserted by (la). Similarly, if we assume that the subject of a &z-cleft like (2a), i.e., a headless relative clause, is a special type of definite referring expression, the referent of this expression, in this case some entity uniquely identifiable from the description x holds the cells together will be assumed to be familiar to the addressee, and the fact that something holds the cells together will not be interpreted as part of what is asserted in (2a). Assuming that the it-cleft is essentiallly identical to the corresponding wh-cleft except that the relative clause appears sentence finally rather than in subject position (see Akmajian (1970) Gundel (1977)) the relative clause in the it-cleft is also a definite referring expression and, if it does not receive primary stress, it will be interpreted as a description of the topic. Thus, using the same reasoning as above, the information that someone called will be interpreted as a background assumption of (3a) and not as part of what is being questioned. Finally, our analysis will predict that the background assumptions of the sentences in (4a, b) will necessarily be different because position of primary stress is different in the two sentences. Since primary stress always falls within the comment, scratched the dog is interpreted as part of a description of the topic in (4a), while the cat scratched x is interpreted as a description of the topic in (4b). Given the topic-familiarity principle, someone who utters (4a) will thus be interpreted as assuming that something scratched the dog and someone who utters (4b) will be interpreted as assuming that the cat scratched something.

6. Some advantages

6.1. Wh-clefts vs. it-clefts

A difference between wh-clefts, like (2a), and it-clefts, like (3a) is that the expression which refers to the topic is in sentence initial, subject position in the former construction but in sentence final position in the latter. It was noted in 4.2 above that sentence final topics typically refer to some entitiy which is not only familiar to the addressee, but which is also activated, i.e., an entity which the speakers and addressees attention is already focused on (Prince, p. 66, in this issue) refers to this as Chafe-given). This is not necessarily the case, however, for sentence initial topics. We would therefore predict that while the pragmatic properties of wh-clefts and it-clefts are similar, these two construc- tions will not always be equally appropriate in the same discourse context. In particular, we would expect that the wh-cleft can occur at the very beginning of a discourse when the addressees attention can generally not be expected to be focused on the topic, but that the corresponding it-cleft will not be appropriate

98 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

in such a context. ix This prediction is borne out by examples like the following.

(29) (At the beginning of a lecture) (29a) What I would like to talk about today is conversational implicature. (29b) $Its conversational implicature that I would like to talk about today

(where $ indicates inappropriateness in context, as distinct from un- grammaticality).

(30a) At first meeting, people are always telling Judy Goldsmith that she doesnt look the type. What they seem to expect from the president of the National Organization for Women is someone slick, sophisticated, perhaps a bit strident. (Minneapolis Tribune, October 30, 1983)

(30b) At first meeting, people are always telling Judy Goldsmith that she doesnt look the type. ?Its someone slick, sophisticated, perhaps a bit strident that they seem to expect from the president of the National Organization of Women.

(31) A: Can I help you? B: (a) Yes, what Im looking for is a printer.

(b) ?Yes, its a printer that Im looking for.

But compare

(32) A: Are you looking for a typewriter? B: (a) No, what Im looking for is a printer.

(b) No, its a printer that Im looking for.

where what the speaker is looking for has already been established as a topic. In addition, since the relative clause in the it-cleft is not a surface subject

(and does not occur in sentence initial position), we would expect that it will not refer to the topic as consistently as the relative clause in the w/r-cleft. In fact, as is well known, the relative clause in the it-cleft is often stressed and, in such instances, it is interpreted as part of the new information asserted or

I8 Prince (1978: 888) arrives at a rather different conclusion maintaining that it is the wh-cleft which can only be used appropriately if the speaker can assume that the material inside the wh-clause is in the hearers consciousness at the time of hearing the utterance. This proposed discourse condition on wh-clefts appears to be incorrect, however, in light of examples like the following:

(i) A: How am I going to get this spot out of the rug? B: What my mother always uses is vinegar.

?Its vinegar that my mother always uses.

The discourse of (i) shows that it is the it-cleft and not the wh-cleft whose relative clause must contain material that is already in the addressees consciousness at the time of utterance.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 99

questioned in the sentence. This use of the it-cleft is illustrated by the sentences in (33) and (34).

(33) It was just about 50 years ago that Henry Ford gave us the weekend. (Prince (1978: 898))

(34) Wasnt it just yesterday that he said the troops would be out in a few days? (conversation overheard, October 26, 1983)

Thus, the structural properties of topics in English outlined in section 4, in conjunction with the topic-familiarity principle established in section 3, allow us to correctly predict the following facts about the interpretation of it-clefts and w&clefts:

(a) The relative clause in the w/z-cleft typically refers to the topic (either activated or unactivated) and the material in the clause is thus generally interpreted as a background assumption.

(b) The relative clause in the it-cleft either refers to an activated topic (if it is unstressed) or it does not refer to the topic at all (if it is stressed). In the former case the content of the clause is interpreted as a background assumption which the speakers and addressees attention is already focused on; in the latter case it is interpreted as part of the comment, i.e. the new information asserted or questioned in the sentence.

6.2. Suspending background assumptions

We saw in (33) and (34) that the content of the relative clause in a cleft sentence is not always interpreted as a background assumption and can be used to assert or question the existence of some entity not already familiar to the addressee. Similar observations have been made about ordinary definite noun phrases, as in (35)-(40).

(35) The King of Ruritania came to my party. Did you know that Ruritania had a king? (Kempson (1975))

(36) Dont come into this house, my friend, or Ill set the dog on you (Hawkins (1976: 288))

(37) The King of France is bald (as an answer to the question: What bald notables do you know?) (Strawson (1964))

(38) This is the frammis; this is the external effluent-collector and this is one of the lateral lyptographs. (McCawley (1979: 387))

(39) Charles provided a small embroidered purse, Ernestinas work, and set three sovereigns on the green desk beside Grogan. (John Fowles, The French Lieutenants Woman)

(40) The Senate on August 10 voted 50 to 48 to spend $736,400 for a third

100 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

Senate Gymnasium due to the built in the 137.7 million-dollar host senate office building opening in January. (U.S. News and World Report, August 3, 1982, p. 9)

Sentences like those in (35)-(40) have been problematic for theories which attempt to handle the facts at issue here by directly associating presuppositions or given information with definite descriptions. Such examples, however, are not only consistent with the theory proposed in the present work, they are explained by it. Since the definite noun phrases in question all receive primary stress in the sentences in (35)-(40) they cannot be interpreted as referring to the topic of the sentence. Thus, we predict correctly that the addressee will not necessarily be expected to have previous familiarity with the referent. I9

6.3. Entities vs. propositions; assumed familiarity vs. shared knowledge

In the previous section we saw that the analysis proposed here has certain advantages over theories which attempt to explain the facts at issue by directly associating presuppositions or given information with specific linguistic forms. In contrast to these theories, we were able to predict not only when the meaning associated with such forms is interpreted as a background assump- tion, but also when it is not. An additional advantage of our proposal concerns the nature of the background assumption itself. In the theory put forward here, what is assumed to be taken for granted (the background assumption) is familiarity with an entity. In a presuppositional or given information analysis, what is taken for granted is a proposition. (Prince (1981) is a notable exception here). More specifically, the speaker is assumed to believe, and to assume that the addressee believes, etc., in the truth of some proposition associated with the form in question. For example, such theories would correctly predict that a speaker who utters the (a) sentences in (la, b)-(4a, b), repeated here as (41a)-(44a), is committed to a belief in the truth of the respective propositions in (41b)-(44b) and to an assumption that the addressee shares this belief.

(41a) The news conference was (not) held yesterday. (41b) There is/was a news conference. (42a) What holds the cells together is (not) a molecular glue. (42b) Something holds the cells together. (43a) Was(nt) it my mother who called?

I9 The existence of the referent of the definite NP is of course still entailed by these sentences. However, this fact is independent of background assumptions and would be predicted by the usual rules of entailment. * This term is taken from Prince (1981).

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 101

(43b) Someone called. (44a) The cat scratched the dog. (44b) Something scratched the dog.

Examples like those in (35)-(40) above, where the speaker does not assume that the addressee shares a belief in the existence of the referent of the definite NP are thus problematic for such theories. Even more problematic are exam- ples like the (a) sentences in (45a, b)-(49a, b) below, where the speaker either explicitly denies a belief in the truth of the proposition expressed by the corresponding (b) sentence or leaves open the possibility that it may not be true.

(45a) Though we cannot be sure that anyone was cheating, what we have to check is whether any law students had books with them in the exam room. (Kempson (1975: 194))

(45b) Some students had books with them in exam room. (46a) Im still not convinced that anyone called, but I know it wasnt my

mother (who called). (46b) Someone called. (47a) You say that someone in this room loves Mary. Well maybe so. But it

certainly isnt Fred (who loves Mary), and it clearly isnt John. And.. . Therefore, no one in this room loves Mary. (Keenan (1971: 52))

(47b) Someone in this room loves Mary. (48a) If I pull this handle, the explosion is inhibited. (Gazdar (1979)) (48b) There is/will be an explosion. (49a) The King of France didnt visit the exhibition, because France has no

King. (Kempson (1975)) (49b) There is a King of France.

Such examples require no special treatment, however, in a theory in which the facts at issue here are explained in terms of the topic-familiarity principle. It is no doubt true that familiarity with some entity is often based on knowledge or belief in the truth of a corresponding proposition. For example, a speaker who utters (42a) is likely to be familiar, and to know that the addressee is familiar, with some entity describable as what holds the cells together on the basis of a belief in the proposition that something holds the cells together. However, while belief in the truth of some proposition always entails familiarity with an entity described by that proposition the converse is not true. Familiarity with the entity described by a definite NP, even when that NP refers to the topic, does not, for example, entail a belief in its existence, as illustrated by the example in (50).

(50) A: Where will John, Mary, and their children sleep?

102 J.K. Gundel / Shared knowledgeand topicality

B: John and Mary can sleep in the guest room. As for their children, thats no problem because they dont have any.

Bs response is perfectly felicitous in the context of As utterance even though B does not believe that John and Mary have children. What is required in order for Johns children to serve as a possible topic is that both speaker and hearer know that at least one of the participants in the conversation has entertained the possibility that John has children, i.e., that the entity describa- ble as Johns children is a familiar one in the discourse context. By freeing the facts at issue here from the requirement of truth or belief in the truth of some proposition we can also explain differences in the interpretation and discourse distribution of sentences like those in (51a-c), which were discussed by Kiparsky and Kiparsky (1971).

(51a) The UP1 reported that Smith had resigned. (51b) It was reported by the UP1 that Smith had resigned. (51~) That Smith had resigned was reported by the UPI.

Kiparsky and Kiparsky observe (1971: 366) that (51c), unlike (51a) and (51b) normally conveys the meaning that the speaker assumes the report to be true. It is clear, however, that a person who utters (51~) is not necessarily committed to a belief in the truth of the proposition that Smith resigned. Moreover, we find exactly the same differences in distribution and interpreta- tion in sentences like those in (52a, b) where neither the (a) nor the (b) sentence can be associated with a belief on the part of the speaker that Smith resigned. (See Gundel and Jacobs (1980) for further discussion.)

(52a) It is unlikely that Smith had resigned. (52b) That Smith had resigned is unlikely.

What distinguishes (51~) and (52b) from (51a, b) and (52a) is the assumption that Smiths resignation has at least been entertained in the discourse context by either the speaker or the addreseee or both, i.e., an assumption that the idea that Smith resigned is a familiar one to both speaker and addressee. Since the clause that Smith resigned is also in subject position in (51~) and (52b), and thus more likely to be interpreted as a topic, this is exactly what would be predicted by the topic-familiarity principle.

6.4. The ordered entailment model

Before concluding, I would like to briefly discuss a proposal by Wilson and Sperber (1979), which appears to share at least some of the advantages of the analysis proposed in the present work.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 103

Wilson and Sperber propose to avoid incorporating a separate notion of presupposition (into semantics or pragmatics) by enriching semantic interpre- tations in such a way that simple pragmatic principles interact with them to predict the background assumptions of a sentence. More specifically, they propose that rather than being all on a par (as assumed in standard truth functional semantics), the entailments of a sentence be ordered into two sets - a foreground set and a background set. The proposition obtained by substitut- ing the focused (i.e., primary stressed) constituent of a sentence by a variable (cf. Chomsky (1971)) which they refer to as the primary background entail- ment, as well as all entailments of this proposition, constitute the background entailments of the sentence. The propositon which entails the primary back- ground entailment constitutes the foreground. A pragmatic principle then predicts that all background entailments are taken for granted, whereas the foreground entailment is the main point of saying a sentence.

Thus, to take an illustration, (53) and (54) have identical entailments; these include (55), (56) and (57).

(53) My brother will meet you. (54) My brother will meet you. (55) I have a brother. (56) My brother will do something. (57) Someone will meet you.

However, Wilson and Sperbers model assignes a different order of importance to the entailments of (53) and (54). The primary background entailment of (53), with focus on meet, is (56). Since (56) itself entails (55) the fact that the speaker has a brother is correctly predicted to be a background assumption of (53). The primary background entailment of (54) on the other hand, is (57). Since (57) (unlike (56)) does not entail (55) the fact that the speaker has a brother will not be interpreted as a background assumption of (54).

Since Wilson and Sperbers ordered entailment model depends crucially on position of sentence stress, a factor which also interacts with topic-comment structure, it has some of the same advantages as the proposal put forward in the present work. For example, both analyses would correctly predict that the existence of the referent of a definite description will not be a background assumption if the definite description receives the primary stress in the sentence, as in (54) above. However, Wilson and Sperbers analysis also encounters a number of problems which do not arise from our proposal. First of all, since their model is based on Chomskys (1971) proposal for interpreting focus and presupposition, it inherits all the problems associated with that analysis. (See Gundel (1974) for a summary and discussion of some of these problems.)

Another drawback of Wilson and Sperbers model involves its dependence

104 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

on the semantic notion of entailment. Since their model predicts that the background assumptions of a given sentence will always be included among the set of entailments of that sentence (more specifically the set consisting of the primary background entailment and all the entailments of the background entailment which can be obtained by the variable substitution method), it raises all the same problems that undermine semantic theories of presupposi- tion (see Levinson (1983)). These include cases involving modal or opaque contexts where entailments cannot survive. Thus, since (58) does not entail (59) the ordered entailment model incorrectly predicts that (59) cannot be a background assumption of (58).

(58) My brother may meet you. (59) I have a brother.

Also problematic for a theory which attempts to handle the facts at issue in terms of the semantic notion of entailment are examples like (46a, b)-(50) where expected entailments are cancelled or suspended. As was shown above, such examples are not problematic if what is assumed to be taken for granted is the addressees familiarity with an entity rather than truth or belief in the truth of a proposition.

Finally, it is not clear that the ordered entailment model can handle some of the most basic facts that it was designed to account for. Consider the sentences in (60a, b) for example.

(60a) The special news conference will be held tomorrow. (60b) A special news conference will be held tomorrow.

(60a) and (60b) have identical entailments. In particular, they both entail (61).

(61) There is/will be a special news conference.

However, assuming so-called neutral, sentence final stress on tomorrow, Wilson and Sperbers model will incorrectly predict that (61) is also a background assumption of both (60a) and (60b).

7. Conclusion

I have argued in this paper that the background assumptions inferrable from certain sentences are not directly built into specific linguistic forms such as definite noun phrases, w/r-clefts, it-clefts and unstressed parts of a sentence; rather, they are associated with such forms indirectly as a consequence of the role that the latter play in encoding the topic-comment structure of a sentence.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 105

Whether, the analysis I have proposed can be extended to other, so-called presuppositional phenomena such as factive verbs for example, is a question I leave for further study.

A more complete and more formal description of the complex interaction between topic-comment structure and linguistic form in natural languages is required before we can determine more conclusively whether this interaction can provide the basis for a satisfactory explanation of the facts discussed in this work. An attempt at such a description should, in any case, provide to be a fruitful direction for further research.

References

Akmajian, A., 1970. On deriving cleft sentences from pseudo-cleft sentences. Linguistic Inquiry 1: 149-168.

Allerton, D.J., 1978. The notion of givenness and its relations to presupposition and to theme. Lingua 44: 133-168.

Bak, S.-Y., 1977. Topicalization in Korean. University of Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics 9(2): 63-88.

Bates, E., 1976. Language and context. New York: Academic Press. Chafe, W.L., 1976. Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view.

In: C.N. Li, ed., 1976. pp. 25-55. Chomsky, N., 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT. Press. Chomsky, N., 1971. Deep structure, surface structure and semantic interpretation. In: D.

Steinberg and L. Jacobovits, eds., 1971. pp. 183-216. Chomsky, N., 1977. On wh-movement. In: P. Culicover et al., eds., Formal Syntax. New York:

Academic Press. pp. 71-132. Clark, H.H. and S.E. Haviland, 1977. Comprehension and the given-new contract. In: R.O.

Freedle, ed., Discourse production and comprehension. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, pp. l-10. Cole, P., ed., 1981. Radical pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. Creider, C., 1975. Thematization and word order. Paper presented at the 1975 annual meeting of

the Linguistic Society of America, San Franscisco. Dahl, D.A., 1984. The structure and function of one-anaphora in English. Ph.D. dissertation,

University of Minnesota. Dahl, G., 1969. Topic and comment: A study in Russian and general transformational grammar.

Acta Universatis Gothoburgensis. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. (Slavica Gothoburgensia,

4). Dane& F., ed., 1974. Papers on functional sentence perspective. The Hague: Mouton. (Janua

Linguarum, Series Minor, 147). Dooley, R.A., 1982. Options in the pragmatic structuring of Guarani sentences. Language 58:

307-331. Erku, F., 1983. Discourse pragmatics and word order in Turkish. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of

Minnesota. Erteschik-Shir, N., 1979. Discourse constraints on dative movement. In: T. Given, ed., 1979. pp.

44-468. Fillmore, C.J. and D.T. Langendoen, eds., 1971. Studies in linguistic semantics. New York: Holt,

Rinehart, and Winston. Firbas, J., 1964. On defining the theme in functional sentence analysis. Travaux Linguistiques de

Prague 1: 267-380.

106 J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality

Fodor, J.D., 1979. In defense of the truth value gap. In: C.-K. Oh and D.A. Dinneen. eds., 1979. pp. 199-224.

Fodor, J.D. and I. Sag, 1982. Referential and quantificational indefinites. Linguistics and Philoso- phy 5: 355-398.

Fuller, J.W., 1981. Theme, rheme, and word order in Ojibwa. Minnesota Papers in Linguistics and Philosophy of Language 7: 123-148.

Gazdar, G., 1979. Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. Given, T., 1979a. On understanding grammar. New York: Academic Press. Given, T., ed., 1979b. Discourse and syntax. Syntax and semantics, Vol. 12. New York: Academic

Press. Gundel, J.K., 1974. The role of topic and comment in linguistic theory. Ph.D. dissertation.

University of Texas at Austin. Reproduced by Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1977. Gundel, J.K., 1977. Where do cleft sentences come from? Language 53: 543-559. Gundel, J.K., 1978a. Stress, pronominalization and the given-new distinction. University of

Hawaii Working Papers in Linguistics lO(2): 1-13. Gundel, J.K., 1978b. A universal constraint on deletion. In: W.U. Dressler and W. Meid, eds.,

Proceedings from the XIIth International Congress of Linguists. Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Sprachwissenschaft, pp. 532-536.

Gundel, J.K., 1979. Susumu Kunos functional syntax. In: M. Kac, ed., Current syntactic theories: Discussion Papers from the 1979 Milwaukee Syntax Conference. Indiana University Linguistics Club. pp. 15-28.

Gundel, J.K., 1980. Zero-anaphora in Russian: A case of topic-prominence?. In: J. Kreiman and A.E. Ojeda, eds., Proceedings from the Parasession on Anaphora. Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 139-146.

Gundel, J.K. and R.A. Jacobs, 1980. Why seem and be arent what they seem to be. Centerpoint 412): 115-123.

Halliday, M.A.K., 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English II. Journal of Linguistics 3: 199-244.

Hawkins, J.A., 1976. On explaining some ungrammatical sequences of article+ modifier in English. In: S.S. Mufwene et al., eds., Papers from the Twelfth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. University of Chicago Linguistic Department. pp. 287-301.

Hinds, J., ed., 1978. Anaphora in discourse. Edmonton: Linguistic Research. Hornby, P.A., 1972. The psychological subject and predicate. Cognitive Psychology 3: 632-642. Hutchinson, L.G., 1971. Presupposition and belief inferences. In D. Adams et al., eds., Papers

from the Seventh Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. University of Chicago Department of Linguistics. pp. 134-141.

Karttunen, L., 1974. Presupposition and linguistic context. Theoretical Linguistics 1: 181-194. Karttunen, L. and P. Stanley Peters, 1979. Conventional implicature. In C.-K. Oh and D.A.

Dineen, eds., 1979. pp. l-56. Keenan, E.L., 1971. Two kinds of presupposition in natural language. In C.J. Fillmore and D.T.

Langendoen, eds., 1971. pp. 45-54. Kempson, R.M., 1975. Presupposition and the delimitation of semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. Kiparsky, P. and C. Kiparsky, 1971. Fact. In: D. Steinberg and L. Jacobovits, eds., 1971. pp.

345-369. Kiss, E.K., 1979. Topic and focus in Hungarian syntax. Montreal Working Papers in Linguistics 8:

l-42. Kuno, S., 1972. Functional sentence perspective: A case study from Japanese and English.

Linguistic Inquiry 3: 269-320. Kuno, S., 1976. Subject, theme and the speakers empathy - a reexamination of relativization

phenomena. In: C.N. Li, ed., 1976. pp. 417-444.

J. K. Gundel / Shared knowledge and topicality 107

Li, C.N., ed., 1976. Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press. Li, C.N. and S.A. Thompson, 1976. Subject and topic: A new typology of language. In: C.N. Li,

ed., 1976. pp. 457-489. Levinson, SC., 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Margretta, W.R., 1977. Topic-comment structure and linguistic theory: A functional approach.

Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Michigan. Mathesius, V., 1928. On linguistic characterology with illustrations from Modem English. Actes

du Premier Congrb International de Linguistes a La Haye, pp. 56-63. Reprinted in J. Vachek, ed., A Prague School Reader in Linguistics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1967. pp. 59-67.

McCawley, J.D., 1979. Presupposition and discourse structure. In: C.-K. Oh and D.A. Dinneen, eds., 1979. pp. 225-234.

Oh, C.-K. and D.A. Dinneen, eds., 1979. Presupposition. Syntax and semantics, Vol. 11. New York: Academic Press.

Prince, E.F., 1978. A comparison of wh-clefts and it-clefts in discourse. Language 54: 883-906. Prince. E.F., 1981. Towards a taxonomy of given and new information. In: P. Cole, ed. 1981. pp.

223-256. Prince, E.F., 1985. Fancy syntax and shared knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics 9: 65-81. Reinhart, T., 1982. Pragmatics and linguistics. An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27(l):

53-94. Sanders, G.A. and J.R. Wirth, 1985. Discourse, pragmatics, and linguistic form. In: J.R. Wirth,

ed., Pragmatics and syntactic form. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Press. Schachter, P., 1976. The subject in Philipppine languages: Topic, actor, actor-topic, or none of

the above. In: C.N. Li, ed., 1976. pp. 491-518. Schmerling, S.F., 1975. Evidence from sentence stress for the notions of topic and comment. In:

SF. Schmerling and R.D. King, eds., Texas Linguistic Forum 19: 135-141. Sgall, P., E. HajZovP and E. BeneSovL, 1973. Topic, focus and generative semantics. Kronberg:

Scriptor. Steinberg, D. and L. Jakobovits, eds., 1971. Semantics. An interdisciplinary reader in linguistics,

philosophy and psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strawson, P.F., 1952. Introduction to logical theory. London: Methuen. Strawson, P.F., 1964. Identifying reference and truth-values. Theoria 30: 96-118. Reprinted in D.

Steinberg and L. Jakobovits, eds., 1971. pp. 86-114. Tomlin, R.S. and R. Rhodes, 1979. An introduction to information distribution in Ojibwa. In:

P.R. Clyne et al., eds., Papers from the 15th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. pp. 307-320.

Wilson, D., 1975. Presuppositions and non-truth-conditional semantics. New York: Academic Press.

Wilson, D. and D. Sperber, 1979. Ordered entailments: An alternative to presuppositional theories. In C.-K. Oh and D.A. Dinneen, eds., 1979. pp. 299-324.