topic–comment

Terms describing sentence structure in linguistics

EntityQ933845

Also known as theme-rheme

Subclass of: separation

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally agreed that clauses are divided into topic vs. comment, but in certain cases, the boundary between them depends on the specific grammatical theory that is used to analyze the sentence.

Overview

All data

18 statements · 22% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Members / parts: topic
focus
Field of work: grammar

On other databases

13 identifiers linking topic–comment across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

22%

externally sourced

Source last edited August 21, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). topic–comment (Q933845). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/topic-comment-Q933845