On the topic of topic and topic continuity

Abstract

Objectives To determine whether mortality between 1991 and 1995 in hospitals in England carrying out surgery for congenital heart disease in children was associated with the annual volume of cases and to estimate the extent to which an association could explain the apparent divergent mortality at Bristol Royal Infirmary. Design Retrospective analysis of data from two sources, a register of returns by surgeons to their professional society and an administrative database. Setting 12 hospitals in England carrying out surgery for congenital heart disease over the period April 1991 to March 1995. Main outcome measure 30 day mortality. Results For open heart operations in children under 1 year old, and in particular for arterial switches and repair of atrioventricular septal defect, there is strong and consistent evidence of an inverse association between mortality and volume of cases (not taking into account any data from Bristol). A hospital carrying out 120 open operations per year in 1991-5 on children aged under 1 year would be expected to have a mortality 25% lower than that in a hospital carrying out 40 operations. If the children in the hospitals had the same mix of operations, this reduction is 34%. Stratifying for types of operation or including the results from Bristol strengthens this association. It was also estimated that less than a fifth of the excess mortality at Bristol Royal Infirmary in open operations in children less than 1 year old was due to the hospital's lower volume of surgery. Conclusions Using appropriate methods, this study showed that mortality in paediatric cardiac surgery was inversely related to the volume of surgery. Considerable caution is needed in interpreting these results, and it does not necessarily follow that concentrating resources in fewer centres would reduce mortality.

The linguistic realization of information packaging

“…The ΑΙ-focus would be, roughly, the (most continuous) topic for Givon. For an exhaustive survey of the Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 1/23/18 8:58 AM different meanings and uses assigned to these terms see Schlobinski and Schutze-Coburn (1992) and Humphreys (1993).…”

Topical Profiling

“…1. Topics are frequently studied at the sentential level of analysis (e.g., Chen, 1996;Reinhart, 1981;Schlobinski & Schütze-Coburn, 1992). The structural perspective also underlies much of the topic literature (e.g., G. Brown & Yule, 1983;Button & Casey, 1988Crow, 1983;Maynard, 1980).…”

Context and Discourse

“…The literature on topic is large and often contradictory. The surveys of Schlobinski and Schütze-Coburn (1992) and McNally (1998) provide some useful overview. 16 I am assuming as little about the structure of topic marking as possible.…”

“…There are quite a few other devices that have been used for defining discourse topic, including open propositions (Prince, 1981;Ward, 1985) and lambda terms (Steedman, 2000). I am following a number of authors, including Reinhart (1981) and Schlobinski and Schütze-Coburn (1992) in not taking a simple analysis of topic in terms of given and new information to be sufficient. Topic/focus interaction arguments (von Fintel, 1994) and nested focus arguments (Krifka, 1993) reinforce this conclusion, as do the considerations I shall raise below.…”