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, like Japanese, from subject-prominent languages, like 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 of topic-prominent languages

Many topic-prominent languages share several syntactic features that have arisen because, in these languages, sentences 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 where the subject is understood to be the topic by default.
• They usually don't 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:

(Japanese) Sono yashi-wa happa-ga ookii.

その　ヤシは　葉っぱが　大きい。

"That palm tree (topic) leaves (subject) are big."

(Mandarin) Zhège rén gèzi hěn gāo.

這個人 個子 很高/这个人 个子 很高。

"This person (topic) height (subject) tall."

• 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, 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." This ambiguity is demonstrated in the following example:

	làthyu	nya	ánà	khù	-a
Gloss:	people	topic	dog	bite	-declarative
Translation:	a. "People, they bite dogs."
	b. "People, dogs bite them."

Examples

Examples of topic-prominent languages include East Asian languages such as the Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian, Singaporean English and Malaysian English. Hungarian, the Somali language, and Amerindian tongues like the Siouan languages are also topic-prominent. American Sign Language is also considered to be topic-prominent.

Mandarin Chinese

張三

我

已經

見過

了。

->

Original order:

我

已經

見過

了

張三。

Transcription:

Zhāng Sān

wǒ

yǐjing

jiàn-guò

le.

Transcription:

wǒ

yǐjing

jiàn-guò

le

Zhāng Sān.

Gloss:

Zhang San

I

already

see-EXP

RES

Gloss:

I

already

see-EXP

RES

Zhang San.

Translation:

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

Translation:

I've already seen Zhang San.

Japanese

	魚は	鯛が	美味しい	です。
Transcription:	Sakana-wa	tai-ga	oishi-i	desu.
Gloss:	"fish"-TOP	"red snapper"-NOM	"delicious"-NPST	"it is"-V
Translation:	"Among fish, red snapper is [most] delicious" or "Red snapper is the most delicious fish," idiomatic Japanese for "Red snapper is my favorite fish" (because oishii is a subjective observation, not a statement of fact).

Lakota

	Miye	ṡuŋkawaḱaŋ eya	owiċabluspe	yelo.
Pronunciation:	miyé	s^uNkáwakxaN eyá	owíchabluspe	yeló.
Gloss:	be-the-one-1SG	horse DET.PL	catch-3PL.UND-1SG.ACT-catch	DECL.male
Translation:	(As for) me, some horses: I caught them. -> It was me who caught some horses (I caught some horses)

See also

• Topic particle