The thetic/categorical distinction revisited once more

Abstract

This paper discusses the distinction thetic/categorical from the viewpoint of a modular framework where the main components are, on the one hand, grammar (a formal component) and information structure (a functional component), both belonging to the language system, and, on the other, an extralinguistic component, conceptual structure. The interaction between grammar and information structure results in specific clause structures giving rise to a thetic or categorical interpretation, respectively. It is maintained that the syntactic structure of thetic and categorical clauses is the same, the informational difference between them being triggered by the interaction between focus-background structure and topic-comment structure. Thetic clauses, thus, are all-focused and all-comment. In addition, their predicate must have a specific meaning that qualifies the clause for a thetic reading. It is further maintained that the distinction thetic/categorical is an extralinguistic, conceptual distinction between two ways of perspectivizing an event. Thetic stands for a perspective where an event is looked upon as a stage, that is, an event in the flow of other (potential) events; categorical stands for a perspective where an event is divided into two parts, one of which is viewed as an entity to which something happens or which does something. Consequently, there is no such thing as a thetic clause. There are only clauses that - because of their specific informational structure (being all-focused and all-comment) and the right meaning of the predicates, sometimes taking help from cotext - unambiguously give rise to a thetic reading. The thetic reading is triggered by the clause with this specific constellation (primarily its lacking a topic) looking for its topic in CS, picking out the concept of a stage as its topic, and commenting on it