topikaalinen
Topikaalinen is an adjective in Finnish used to describe linguistic or discourse phenomena related to the topic of a clause. The core idea is topicality: the property of a constituent to function as the topic, or teema, around which the rest of the sentence—the comment or rheme—is organized. In a sentence with topicalization, the topic is often placed in the initial position and may receive prosodic prominence; how topics are marked can vary by language, using word order, case marking, or particles.
In Finnish and in cross-linguistic discourse analysis, topikaalisuus is studied within information structure and the theme-rheme
Example in Finnish: “Tämän kirjan minä luin eilen.” Here, “Tämän kirjan” functions as the topic, preceding the
The concept is central to discussions of functional sentence perspective, theme-rheme division, and cross-linguistic information-structure studies.
See also: tema (theme), topikointi, fokusoituminen, teema-rhema, functional sentence perspective.