Live briefing
Everything about Topic and comment
Terms describing information structure in linguistics
In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally agreed that clauses are divided into topic vs. comment, but in certain cases, the boundary between them depends on the specific grammatical theory that is used to analyze the sentence. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: Topic and commentA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Unlocking travel narratives: a fusion of stacking ensemble deep learning and neural topic modeling for enhanced tourism comment analysisInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Meaning of Topic and FocusThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: Topic and topic-comment constructions in Mandarin ChineseCited 93 times
- Go sideways: Functional sentence perspectiveA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Information structureA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
No dictionary entry for this exact phrase.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
Topic and topic-comment constructions in Mandarin Chinese
Topic-Comment Structure, Focus Movement, and Gapping Formation
Topic-comment and relative clause in Arabic
Fillmore's mysteries and topic vs. comment
Sarcasm detection integrates topic background and comment sentiment
Sarcasm detection integrates topic background and comment sentiment
🆕 Influential since 2022
Unlocking travel narratives: a fusion of stacking ensemble deep learning and neural topic modeling for enhanced tourism comment analysis
Reddit comment analysis: sentiment prediction and topic modeling using VADER and BERTopic
Comparative analysis of the topic-comment structure in Chinese and Russian
Fundamental structures of the Chinese language: topic-comment and other key structures
Analysis of Korean Sentence Structure through the Positing of the Topic Part and the Comment Part
📚 Books worth reading
- 📕Meaning of Topic and FocusDaniel Büring · 2012
- 📕Sekundaere Praedikation und InformationsstrukturSteffen Heidinger · 2018
Supportive Conversations on Facebook TimelinesRadzuwan Ab. Rashid, Kamariah Yunus · 2018- 📕Thematic Relations and Relational GrammarPatrick Farrell · 2016
Information StructureNomi Erteschik-Shir · 2007- 📕Topic and Focus Markers in Spanish, Portuguese and FrenchAnja Hennemann · 2020
- 📕Diachronic Studies on Information StructureGisella Ferraresi · 2010
- 📕Subject and Predicate in Logic and GrammarP. F. Strawson · 2017
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Functional sentence perspective In linguistics, functional sentence perspective (FSP) is a theory describing the information structure of the sentence and language communication in general…
- Information structure In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence…
- Jan Firbas Jan Firbas (25 March 1921, Brno – 5 May 2000, Brno), was a Czech linguist and a prominent representative of the Prague School of linguistics. Born in Brno…
- Functional linguistics Functional linguistics is an approach to the study of language characterized by taking systematically into account the speaker's and the hearer's side…
- Focus (linguistics) In linguistics, focus (abbreviated foc) is a grammatical category that conveys the part of the sentence that contributes new, non-derivable, or contrastive…
- Thematic equative In systemic functional grammar, a thematic equative is a thematic resource in which two or more separate elements in a clause are grouped together to form…
- Michael Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018), often credited as M. A. K. Halliday, was a British linguist who developed the international…
- Intonation (linguistics) In linguistics, intonation is the variation in pitch used to indicate the speaker's attitudes and emotions, to highlight or focus an expression, to signal…