(61) a. The dog is in the garden b. There is a dog in the garden […] (i) the difference between (61a) and (61b) is located in a difference in pragmatic function relevant to the argument term “the dog”; (ii) the argument term in the “there”-construction is said to have the pragmatic function “Presentative”, which is defined as follows (“ibid.” 171 [Hannay, 1985, English existentials in Functional Grammar, Dordrecht, Foris]): “A term with presentative function refers to an entity which the speaker by means of the associated predication wishes to explicitly introduce into the world of discourse”; (iii) this pragmatic function is then used to trigger those rules which carry the argument term to its non-initial position, and introduce the dummy element “there”. […] I shall use the term New Topic for this “presentative function”, in order to stress its position in the strategies for introducing, maintaining, and renewing “discourse topics”.
- Dik (1989), a pag.179

‘New Topic’: we saw that NewTops are typically introduce through some non-initial position in the clause. The general rule will be that the NewTop constituent captures the most prominent accent of the expression. Inside that constituent it will be distributed to characteristic accent position(s) of the constituent. Compare: (21) a. In the circus we saw an /¯ELephant b. In the circus we saw an /¯ELephant called /¯ JUmbo c. There is a /¯HAIR in my soup Note that the accent does not distribute to all constituents of the NewTop. For example, “called” in (21b) and “soup” (21c) remain without accent.
- Dik (1989), a pag.391

If a discourse is to be about a certain D-Topic [Discourse Topic], that D-Topic will, at some point, have to be introduced for the first time. Such a first presentation of a D-Topic will be called a New Topic (NewTop) […].
- Dik (1989), a pag.267