Topicalization: the rhetorical strategies it serves and the interpretive strategies it imposes

Despite evidence to the contrary, many linguists persist in regarding topicalization as a purely grammatical "structure" to be accounted for by increasingly arbitrary & unmotivated syntactic or semantic rules or some combination of the two. The examples discussed in this essay suggest, however, that topicalization is a pragmatic rule available to writers & speakers, that its selection is governed by rhetorical rather than textual considerations, & that its use imposes rather than serves interpretive strategies for readers & hearers. 16 References. HA