Xref: utzoo ont.events:1130 sci.lang:4181 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!sunybcs!rapaport From: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Newsgroups: sunyab.general,sunyab.grads,wny.seminar,ont.events,sci.lang Subject: SUNY Buffalo Cognitive Science--Kuroda Message-ID: <4684@cs.Buffalo.EDU> Date: 13 Mar 89 22:06:25 GMT Sender: nobody@cs.Buffalo.EDU Reply-To: rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (William J. Rapaport) Distribution: na Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science Lines: 36 UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK GRADUATE GROUP IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE PRESENTS S.-Y. KURODA Department of Linguistics University of California, San Diego The Cognitive Basis of the So-Called Topic in Japanese: A Contribution to Discourse and Narrative Theory The Japanese language distinguishes ``topicalized'' and ``nontopical- ized'' sentences by grammatical means. This distinction is commonly accounted for in terms of discourse theory. I once proposed an approach, broadly put, in cognitive semantics, in terms of the distinc- tion between ``categorical'' and ``thetic'' judgments, the distinction originally introduced by Franz Brentano and Anton Marty. I would like to give a fresh look at this distinction; I propose to separate ``affirming'' from ``asserting''. I will apply this distinction to account for different effects that topicalized and nontopicalized sen- tences bring to discourse and narration. Thursday, March 23, 1989 4:00 P.M. 280 Park Hall, Amherst Campus There will be an evening discussion at 8:00 P.M., at Mary Galbraith's, 130 Jewett Parkway, Buffalo. For further information, contact Bill Rapaport, Department of Computer Science, 716-636-3193.