Topic-prominent language

A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N. Li and Sandra Thompson, who distinguished topic-prominent languages, such as Korean and Japanese, from subject-prominent languages, such as English.

In Li and Thompson's (1976) view, topic-prominent languages have morphology or syntax that highlights the distinction between the topic and the comment (what is said about the topic). Topic–comment structure may be independent of the syntactic ordering of subject, verb and object.

Common features

Many topic-prominent languages share several syntactic features that have arisen because the languages have sentences that are structured around topics, rather than subjects and objects:

• They tend to downplay the role of the passive voice, if a passive construction exists at all, since the main idea of passivization is to turn an object into a subject in languages whose subject is understood to be the topic by default.
• They rarely have expletives or "dummy subjects" (pleonastic pronouns) like English it in It's raining.
• They often have sentences with so-called "double subjects", actually a topic plus a subject. For example, the following sentence patterns are common in topic-prominent languages:

Mandarin	這個 这个 zhège 人 人 rén 個子 个子 gèzi 很 很 hěn 高。 高。 gāo (traditional) (simplified)   這個 人 個子 很 高。 这个 人 个子 很 高。 zhège rén gèzi hěn gāo "This person (topic) height (subject) very tall."
Japanese	その sono ヤシは yashi-wa 葉っぱが happa-ga 大きい。 ookii その ヤシは 葉っぱが 大きい。 sono yashi-wa happa-ga ookii "That palm tree (topic) leaves (subject) are big."

• They do not have articles, which are another way of indicating old vs. new information.
• The distinction between subject and object is not reliably marked.

The Lolo–Burmese language Lisu has been described as highly topic-prominent,[1] and Sara Rosen has demonstrated that "while every clause has an identifiable topic, it is often impossible to distinguish subject from direct object or agent from patient. There are no diagnostics that reliably identify subjects (or objects) in Lisu."[2] This ambiguity is demonstrated in the following example:[1]

làthyu

people

nya

TOP

ánà

dog

khù

bite

-a

-DECL

làthyu nya ánà khù -a

people TOP dog bite -DECL

a. "People, they bite dogs."
b. "People, dogs bite them."

Examples

Examples of topic-prominent languages include East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian, Singaporean English and Malaysian English. Turkish,[3][4] Hungarian,[5] Somali, and Native American languages like the Siouan languages are also topic-prominent. Modern linguistic studies have shown that Brazilian Portuguese is a topic-prominent or topic- and subject-prominent language[6][7] (see Brazilian Portuguese#Topic-prominent language). American Sign Language is also considered to be topic-prominent.[8]

Mandarin Chinese

張三

Zhāng Sān

Zhang San

我

wǒ

I

已經

yǐjing

already

見過

jiàn-guò

see-EXP

了。

le

RES

張三 我 已經 見過 了。

{Zhāng Sān} wǒ yǐjing jiàn-guò le

{Zhang San} I already see-EXP RES

(As for) Zhang San, I've seen (him) already.

Usual order*:

我

wǒ

I

已經

yǐjing

already

見過

jiàn-guò

see-EXP

張三

Zhāng Sān

Zhang San

了。

le

RES

我 已經 見過 張三 了。

wǒ yǐjing jiàn-guò {Zhāng Sān} le

I already see-EXP {Zhang San} RES

I've already seen Zhang San.

*Remark: Mandarin Chinese sentences are predominantly SVO, but the language allows the object to be promoted to the topic of the sentence, resulting in an apparently OSV word order.

Japanese

魚は

sakana-wa

fish-TOP

鯛が

tai-ga

red.snapper-NOM

おいしい。

oishi-i

delicious-NPST

魚は 鯛が おいしい。

sakana-wa tai-ga oishi-i

fish-TOP red.snapper-NOM delicious-NPST

When it comes to fish, red snapper is delicious. / Red snapper is a delicious fish.

Lakota

Miye

be-the-one-1SG

ṡuŋkawaḱaŋ

horse

eya

DET.PL

owiċabluspe

catch-3PL.UND-1SG.ACT-catch

yelo.

DECL.male

Miye ṡuŋkawaḱaŋ eya owiċabluspe yelo.

be-the-one-1SG horse DET.PL catch-3PL.UND-1SG.ACT-catch DECL.male

(As for) me, some horses: I caught them. → It was me who caught some horses. (I caught some horses.)

Turkish

Seni

you-ACC

yarın

tomorrow

yine

again

göreceğim.

see-FUT-1SG

Seni yarın yine göreceğim.

you-ACC tomorrow again see-FUT-1SG

You tomorrow again I'll see. → I'll see you again tomorrow.

See also

• Topic marker
• Topic–comment

References

1. Li, Charles N.; Thompson, Sandra A. (1976). "Subject and Topic: A New Typology of Language". In Charles N. Li (ed.). Subject and Topic. New York: Academic Press. pp. 457–489. ISBN 978-0-12-447350-8.
2. Rosen, Sara Thomas (2007). "Structured Events, Structured Discourse". In Ramchand & Reiss (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924745-5.
3. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/langtyp.htm Typology of Language Grammars - San Jose State University
4. http://www.turkofoni.org/files/a_typological_approach_to_sentence_structure_in_turkish-yilmaz_kili_arslan_trakya_uni.pdf A Typological Approach to Sentence Structure in Turkish - Yılmaz Kılıçaslan
5. Kenesei, Istvan; Vago, Robert M.; Fenyvesi, Anna (2002). "1.12. Topic". Hungarian. Routledge. pp. 172–181. ISBN 978-1-134-97646-1.
6. Pontes, E. (1987). O tópico no português do Brasil. Pontes Editores.
7. "As Construções De Tópico No Português Do Brasil: Uma Análise Sintático-Discursiva Em Tempo Real". Filologia.org.br. Retrieved 2012-12-24.
8. Schick, Brenda Sue (2006). Advances in the Sign Language Development of Deaf Children. Oxford University Press. p. 36. ISBN 0-19-518094-1. Retrieved 2008-09-23.