Contrastive-Topic wa as focus interpretation operator

In this presentation, I claim that Contrastive-Topic wa (C-Top) in Japanese introduces a link, following Portner and Yabushita (1998), and functions as focus interpretation operator FIO (Rooth 1992 & 1996). This approach derives several charaderistics of C-Top from properties of a link and FI0. Because C-Top is the FIO that evokes an alternative set to a lexical element with C-Top, it bears focus and exhibits contrastiveness. Also, since FIO requires an operator-variable chain, the construction of C-Top should involve movement. Furthermore, Definiteness of a link forces C-Top to select a D(iscourse)-linked element and to produce an alternative set from a shared set. Finally, C-Top makes a topic-comment structure due to Aboutness of a link.