Thetic vs. categorical

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The term pair thetic vs. categorical is used in information structure studies for topicless, all-new sentences and sentences with a topic.

Examples

Most sentences are categorical, so the literature mostly discusses thetic sentences, e.g.

  • (What's wrong with you?) My boyfriend left me.
  • (Why aren't you playing outside?) It's raining.

Origin

The term pair was made popular in linguistics by Kuroda 1972 and Sasse 1987. Kuroda adopted it from the philosopher Brentano.

References

  • Brentano
  • Kuroda 1972
  • Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1987.

Other languages

German thetisch vs. kategorisch

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