List of Pragmatic Tags
BACKGROUND: parts of a sentence that are given but neither topical nor focussed;
these often state events of general knowledge, or places known to hearer and speaker
RESUMED: parts of sentences that are repeated or that refer back on situations already
stated
FOC: sentence-focus (on most occasion new information)
FOC[]: if there is more than just one referent focussed, the whole part of the sentence
that is in the focus is clenched with brackets (broad/complex foci)
FOC/SETTING: introduction of new, i.e. unknown referents, often together with
information about place and time (common at the beginning of a story) (Frame-setting)
The pragmatic notion "topic" can occur in three different kinds of pragmatic roles:
D-TOP: discourse-topic
P-TOP: paragraph-topic
P-TOPn: it is possible that within a story several referents occur in the role of a
paragraph-topic that can also interact with each other. Therefore it is wise to number
those referents
S-TOP: sentence-topic;
S-TOPn: the accessibility of sentence-topics is generally quite short, and sentencetopics do not interact. It is wise though, to number these referents, too.
/NEW:
FOC/NEW: in most cases information in focus is new information, thus the additional
tag NEW is only necessary to point out the difference in cases where a piece of the
focussed sentence part is given information
D-TOP/NEW: first occurrence of the referent that is in the role of the discourse-topic;
P-TOP/NEW: see above
S-TOP/NEW: see above
/NEW-inferred: the referent itself is new but by linking to a known, topical referent (i.e.
by a possessive suffix) that is already part of the common ground, it is treated as topical
referent, too
/OLD:
D-TOP/OLD: normally a topical referent is given and thus old, so the tag D-TOP is
sufficient here
P-TOP/OLD: see above
S-TOP/OLD: see above;
/OLD-resumed: a topic referent that was not actively involved for several sentences in
the action of the story and is now again part of the action
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Pragmatic Tagging
Especially topical referents are usually not mentioned lexically but anaphorically, to
maintain the reference-tracking of those, the anaphoric markers need to be tagged as
well
>D-TOP: a suffix that encodes and thus refers to the discourse-topic
>P-TOP: see above respectively
>S-TOP: see above respectively
>TOP+TOP: two topical referents (that may even differ in the topical hierarchy) are
encoded in one anaphoric element
>TOP<TOP: this tag codes topical referents encoded in the objective conjugation
analogue to the manner of glossing
Some morphemes imply topicalization, i.e. certain mechanisms like passive voice or
objective conjugation promote or demote referents into certain topical roles
TOP>>S: the topical referent is promoted to the subject-role
TOP>>DO: the topical referent is promoted to the role of the direct object
SHIFT: change of topical referent in the same syntactic position (subject)
Further Reading
Krifka, Manfred (2008) Basic Notions Of Information Structure. In: Kiefer, Ferenc;
É.Kiss, Katalin (Hrsg.) Acta Linguistica Hungarica, Vol. 55 (3-4) Budapest:
Akadémiai Kiadó S. 243-276
<http://www.akademiai.com/content/d71343325l64936x/fulltext.pdf>
Molnár, Valéria (1991) Das TOPIK im Deutschen und im Ungarischen. (Lunder
germanistische Forschungen 58) Stockholm Almqvist & Wiksell
Loos, Eugene E. et.al. (Hg.), (2004) What is a Topic. In: Glossary Of Linguistic Terms
<http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsATopic.htm>
Givón, Talmy (1983) Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative crosslinguistic study.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Lambrecht, Knud (1994) Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Endriss, Cornelia (2008) Grundlagen der Informationsstruktur. Workshop zur
Informationsstruktur und Gestik, 25. April 2008 <http://www.ilg.unistuttgart.de/mitarbeiter/.../CE-Bielefeld08-handout.pdf>
Loos, Eugene E. et.al. (Hg.), (2004) What is Given versus New Information. Glossary
Of Linguistic Terms
<http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsGivenVersusN
ewInformatio.htm>
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