Presuppositional Effects of Scrambling Reconsidered*

Mithun 1992 examines the ordering of constituents in three languages: Cayuga,
Ngandi and Coos. She points out that these languages pose a problem for the common
assumption of theme-rheme (or topic-comment) ordering in that they exhibit the
opposite rheme-theme (or comment-topic) order. 23 As a subcase of this tendency,
Mithun discusses cases of what she calls “topic shift,” where an NP representing a new
topic or a new point of view is placed at the beginning of the sentence when the topic of
the discourse shifts from one to another. While Japanese does not exhibit the
rheme-theme order as a basic pattern, it is likely that what is happening in (56) is “topic
shift” in the sense that the sentence-initial NP introduces a new topic (or a new point of
view). Thus, this NP should not be defocalized but receives another kind of focus,
whose exact nature will be left for future research. Notice that this “topic” is different
from those marked with the topic marker wa as in (57). While the wa-marked NP in (57)
has a contrastive reading, the preposed object NP in (56) does not. Still, the preposed
object NP in (56) plays a role similar to that of wa-marked NPs in that it serves as a
topic. This suggests that not only the wa-marked topic but also this new topic (“topic
shift” topic) is not included in TP. It follows then that it need not be contiguous with
the presupposed verb. 24
(57) Sono okane-wa dare-ga nusunda no?
that money-TOP who-NOM stole Q
‘As for that money, who stole it?’
(58) and (59) further illustrate the “topic shift” in M-scrambling.
(58) Taroo-wa sakana-o tutta. Sono sakana-o Hanako-ga nite tabeta.
Taro-TOP fish-ACC caught that fish-ACC Hanako-NOM cook ate
‘Taro caught a fish. Hanako cooked and ate that fish.’
(59) Senba-yama ni-wa tanuki-ga otte sa. Sore-o ryoosi-ga
Senba mountain in-TOP raccoon-NOM was that-ACC hunter-NOM
teppoo-de utte sa.
gun-with shot
‘In Mt. Senba lived a raccoon. A hunter shot it with a gun.’ (Children’s play
song)
In (58), the first sentence introduces a fish into the discourse. The second sentence
then turns to this fish and says what happened to it. The same applies to the raccoon in
(59).
A similar pragmatic role is played by NPs moved to the sentence-initial position by
L-scrambling.
23 Ojibwa, discussed in Tomlin and Rhodes 1992 also belongs to this category.
24 The “topic shift” topic can appear in embedded clauses from which wa-marked topics are excluded.
Possibly, the “topic shift” topic is adjoined to TP and the contiguity condition applies to only those
elements properly included by TP.
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