From information structure, topic and focus, to theme in Biblical Hebrew

What it is about

Not read: the PDF could not be fetched. From the title and the dissertation's known place in the literature (it is a standard reference on Hebrew information structure, built on Lambrecht's theory): Floor distinguishes topic (what a clause is about) from focus (the new, asserted part), uses Lambrecht's three focus types (predicate focus, argument focus, sentence focus), and explains the pre-verbal position in Hebrew as the slot for a topic switch or for a narrow (argument) focus. He then builds up from clause topics to the theme of a stretch of text. Check every point against the text.

Ideas

• I1. (to check) For every Torah clause with a constituent before the finite verb, label the fronted item as topic switch (it was mentioned before and the subject changes) or argument focus (new or contrastive); compute the two shares.
• I2. (to check) Add Lambrecht's focus types as a column in prag.tsv: predicate focus for the default VS clause, argument focus for X-V with a contrast, sentence focus for presentational clauses (וְהִנֵּה, וַיְהִי …).
• I3. (to check) A paragraph "theme" as the most frequent topic referent across its clauses; compare with Masoretic paragraph division.

For Mova

I1–I2 apply to tools/macula/src/prag.rs (a new column) and to Syntax: the clause and the sentence (word order) and 09-discourse.md; I3 to the paragraph section of 09-discourse.md. Re-read once the PDF is in.

Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@inproceedings{floor2004information,
  title = {{From information structure, topic and focus, to theme in Biblical Hebrew}},
  author = {Floor, Sebastiaan Jonathan},
  booktitle = {SUNScholar (Stellenbosch University)},
  year = {2004},
  url = {https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/1270}
}

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2004-floor-information-structure-topic-focus-theme/