comment (n.)

A term used in SEMANTICS and GRAMMAR as part of an alternative binary characterization of SENTENCE structure to that traditionally found in the SUBJECT/PREDICATE distinction; the opposite term is TOPIC. The topic of a sentence is the person or thing about which something is said, whereas the comment is that part of the sentence which says something further about the topic. In the sentence The book was on the table, the book is the topic, and the remainder of the sentence is the comment. English does not mark this distinction as clearly as some languages, where grammatical PARTICLES, WORD-order contrasts or INFLECTIONS may help to show the contrast. An analogous distinction is made using the terms THEME and RHEME, by some linguists.