A Formal Representation Of The Thematic-Rhematic Structure Of Sentences Based On A Typed A-Calculus

In this paper, we give a formal representation of the thematic-rhem~tic (T-II) structure of a n~tnr,'~l language discourse, b~tsed on ~ typed ~-calculus. In this paper, we give a formed representation of the thematie-rhematic ('P-ll) structure of a, nahum] lsLn-triage discourse. Some pairs, triples, or in general n-tuples of sentences in a discourse may differ in the 1)hLee of theh' information focus. The distribution of this inform~ttion focus is c~dled the thematic-thematic (T-R) structure, or dichotomy. [n English, the use of paa'ticles tile and a (an) is deeply related to tile T-ll strnctu re. lit general, a noun with the particle a constitutes arheme part of tit(; sentence that appears at the ])cginiug of the discourse or text, while that noun with the p~Lrticle tl~e ~ppe~rs ht the second, third, etc. sentences ~LS themes. In Ja.p~Lnese, the %1{ dichotomy is we.ll represented by postpositlons wa and .qa. The Korean bLnguage h~s a similar system. Meanwhile, in Slavic langu~rges ~s Polish, Czech, and ]lnssian, the word order is free ~nd this degree of freedom is used h)r the represent~tion o[ the T-R dichotomy. In Chinese, the word order is also used f(~r the T-R di~ chotomy. Besides theme and rheme, simibLr terms s.s old-information and new-itgormation, topic ~nd comment , topic ~tnd focus etc. ~re used in the literature concerning functionaL1 lingnistics (see, e.g., Va]lduvi). In our ~tn~dysis, since we do not define these terms explicily, it is not essenti~d which terms are used. We. give implicit definition of these concepts a.z'iomati-cally. We eonside.r the problem mainly for J~p~Lnese. We propose to Its('. typed A-c~deulus to analyse the problent. A logie~d notation is seen as a typed X term. Batsi(: types sLre T and l{. t{.onghly speaking, 7' and ll stand for a thenw, l)~rt ~Lnd a rhemc part of e~ sentence, respectively. Tile difference of TIt di-chotomy is given by different types. Thus tile same sentence *nay h;~ve different types depending on the *l';tchujim~ Kotc-ku Tokyo J~tpa, n sitnation. For utterstnces, type inference will be performed. The corre<:tness of ~t given discourse can bc proved by eheckh~g the correctness of the types of each utters, ace. ]in tills p~q)er, we elaborate on this ideaL. 'I'll(; purpose of this psLper is to propose ~t formaJ model for nttersu~ce interprctsLtion of the them~ttic rhematic structure of a ,|~tp~tnesc scntel/ee using tt typed k-cedculus. In our sLn~dysls, a logical notsttion is seen as …