日本語における主題展開のモデルと「主題・焦点の分節」 : チェコ語との対照

Abstract

This paper discusses "topic deployment" in discourse as a problem of two functional areas of human linguistic activity: a) the area of the description of states and events in a real or a possible world, proceeding as a simple archetype "scanning" of the supposed facts of the respective "world", b) the area of judgment about the "world" referred to, which proceeds on the basis of a specific abstract system of "scanning". Partial predictions of "topic deployment" may be obtained by the application of Centering Theory or Saliency Theory, or by an application of a path-searching strategy to a graphic model of the content of the discourse. The results of the "scanning", explained here by analogy with a T.V. scanning and a T.V. program editing system, are further segmented into utterances and other discourse units, in accordance with the cognitive cycle of focusing. In the flow of conversation, utterance boundaries provide an opportunity for a switch-over between the individual conversational "turns", for a change of the viewpoint, etc. The paper further discusses aspects of the topic in Japanese sentences, contrasting them with their Czech versions on the basis of TFA theory. In both languages the non-predicative part of the main clause may be segmented into the "focus zone", which is obligatory, and the "topic zone" and the "transition zone", which are optional. In Japanese, the boundary between the Topic and the rest of the sentence is marked by the particle -WA. In Czech, the beginning of the non-Topic part of the sentence is marked by the position of the verb. The similarity between both mechanisms is obscurred in Czech sentences which consist of three or more components and refer to the real world. The Czech predicate is weakened by a "weak context dependency" and moves to the so-called "Wackernagel position". In both languages, topicalization in subordinate clauses is possible only by the application of semantic contrasting, or by the application of a semantic operator within the framework of the so-called "tri-partite structure".