I'm going to toss in a gratuitous recap before trying to reassert a point -- This thread started with a discussion of constructions such as (A) "In his essay on interpretation, Aristotle commented...." and has since moved to wider discussion of structures such as (B) "According to Aristotle, he says..." and "In Aristotle's essay, it/he says...." Discussion has since focused on the similarities and differences between preposed adverbial PPs and topic/comment constructions. At this point, I'd like to argue that (A) and (B) are quite distinct for reasons in addition -- and unrelated -- to their basic status as constructions with preposed structures. The difference is stylistic and rhetorical: (A) adds crucial information in the preposed unit that cannot be recovered from the rest of the sentence; structures like those in (B) do not -- they're redundant. While there are (arguably) functional reasons why a student might wish to set up a redundant topic-comment-ish structure, the customary bias against redundancy rules them out in mature writing. There's no pressing reason not to say "Aristotle said X." When we find constructions like (B) stylistically "immature," we can do so based on the redundancy without ever objecting to topic-comment constructions. And I suspect that the redundancy, not the phrase-level grammar, is the primary reason writing instructors and mature authors avoid such constructions. Quite a few other types of topic/comment constructions are unproblematic. Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/