Topic-Focus Articulation of Isotopy

The paper deals with linguistic phenomena at suprasentential level. In particular, it looks into how textual analysis can be enhanced by supplementing the Parisian programme of interpretive semantics, as devised by François Rastier, namely his theory of isotopies, with elementary aspects of topic-focus articulation (TFA), as well as contextual boundness (CB) and contextual non-boundness (CN), as elaborated within the Praguian linguistic tradition (V. Mathesius, P. Sgall, E. Hajičová, F. Daneš, J. Firbas), and how the descriptive power of the former can be increased by the latter. In this respect, it is argued that two types of TFA phenomena interact during any process of textual interpretation: those of topic-focus articulation at the level of sentence, conceiving lexical morphs as thematic (T) and/or rhematic (R), as well as contextually bound (CB) and/or contextually non-bound (CN), and those of topic-focus articulation at the level of isotopy, with each isotopy being conceived as structured around a center (an abstract semantic unit) and periphery (a span of concrete utterances). Two types of such interaction are described, each defined by either correlation, or non-correlation of the CB and CN semes at the levels of isotopy and sentence, respectively: thematic-rhematic isotopy, induced by co-occurrence of the CB seme of the center and the CB seme of the periphery; and thematic-rhematic allotopy (i.e. non-isotopy), induced by co-occurrence of the CB seme of the center and the CN seme of the periphery. Since topic-focus isotopies and allotopies can be perceived as members of privative oppositions, a tentative system of such oppositions is presented, based on linguistic analyses of selected European Commission texts drafted in English and their Czech translations. The author’s ultimate intention is to show that the semantic features of topic-focus articulation at the sentential and suprasentential levels are both structurally parallel and functionally complementary.