🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan26.122204.5224@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1 writes:
>In article <1993Jan26.155235.9959@leland.Stanford.EDU>, alderson@cisco.com (Rich Alderson) writes:

>>Wouldn't it rather be "It was *a cat* that Tom saw" under topicalization of
>>the object?
>
>No.  We are talking about cats, or a cat, or (as in my translation) about
>seing a cat.  This is the given.  The news is that it was Tom who did this.
>So _eine_Katze_ is the topic, or "theme", while _Tom_ is the "rheme", i.e.
>the news.  To make _cat_ the news, as in your proposed translation, one
>precisely does *not* topicalize it, yielding
>
>	Tom sah eine Katze.

OK.  I misunderstood what we were talking about.  I took the example sentence
to be the topicalized response to a question such as

	Tom sah einen Hund, nicht wahr?

or	*Was* sah Tom?

(with sentential stress on the WH-word).
-- 
Rich Alderson   'I wish life was not so short,' he thought.  'Languages take
                such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'
                                                        --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@leland.stanford.edu                              _The Lost Road_