TOPICALITY, PROTOTYPE AND THECHINESE TOPIC

The term topic was first proposed by Hockett (1958) to capture a linguistic conceptthat exhibits some similarity to the syntactic notion of subject, but is not as easilydefinable in syntactic terms. I It was thus thought of more or less as a semanticnotion. Hockett (1958:20 I) notes that 'the most general characterization ofpredicative constructions is suggested by the terms "topic" and "comment" for theirICs [Immediate Constituents]: the speaker announces a topic and then sayssomething about it.' Chao (1968) applies it to the analysis of Chinese structure anduses the pair topic and comment to interpret the meaning of the subject andpredicate in Chinese. Later in the 70s, the notion 'topic' was worked on in moredetail, most notably in Li and Thompson (1976) and Tsao (1979). The formerpropose to consider Mandarin Chinese as a topic-prominent language as opposedto subject-prominent languages like English. The latter stresses the discourse natureof topic. In a more recent effort, Tsao (1990) further elaborates at great length onthe notion topic and its functions. In another direction, Xu and Langendoen (1985)and Her (1991 a) are representative of the syntactic considerations of the Chinesetopic.

Two basic facts have been made clear by leading researchers in this area: (i)Topic is a discourse notion while subject is a syntactic one, and (ii) topic andsubject are not mutually exclusive, i.e. a topic, though independent of a subject,may also play the role of a subject and vice versa (see Tsao, 1990: 171). Fact (i)implies that the study of topic would be meaningless ifit was confined within thedomain of a sentence. Fact (ii) entails that cases where a topic is at the same timealso a subject merit equal attention. (In the past, attention has generally beencentered on isolated and highly marked topics, ones that are clearly separate fromthe subject.) Though obvious, these two facts have consistently been overlookedin many of the past studies.

In this chapter, we will thus (i) stress the discourse function of topic as well asits place ~na sentence and (ii) look into the unmarked cases where topic, not beingovertly signalled, has not been keenly observed by many analysts. Most importantof all, we will apply the notion 'prototype' to the definition of topic so that it willcover a range of facts that are related to topic but have so far defied analysis. Tobegin our analysis, we will briefly present the similarities and differences betweentopic and subject first.

The applicability of the characterization may vary from language to language. InEnglish, attribute (c) is not a necessary condition because some subjects may bepostverbal, e.g. in inverted-subject sentences and existentiaVpresentative sentences.On the other hand, Mandarin Chinese being a non-inflectional language does notexhibit any agreement with the verb. In many languages, 'doing' or 'being'relationship with the verb is a usual characteristic of a subject, but it is not alwayspresent in all subjects. Actually, the characterization may vary in its applicabilityeven in the same language. Observe:

Except for (2.a) where the 'full-fledged' subject Bill possesses all three attributeslisted in (1), none of the other three subjects are as 'full-fledged' -they lack one ortwo of the attributes. The one in (2.b) doesn't bear any 'doing' or 'being'relationship with the verb, the one in (2.c) is not in a preverbal position, and the onein (2.d), Bill, Jim, and Jack, doesn't even agree with the verb. However, bothintuitively and technically, all the sentences in (2) are recognized as having asubject, though some ofthe subjects can be better characterized than others. On thebasis of facts like the above, it is perhaps appropriate to consider some subjectsmore typical than others in grammatical study.

On the other hand, English assigns a topic status to a sentence-initial nominalthat cannot be reasonably recognized as a subject (e.g. bearing no 'doing' or 'being'relationship with the verb) or is marked one way or another (e.g. by a prepositionor the presence of a more subject-like nominal) as a non-subject. E.g.

pronominalization or deletion processes: reflexivization,imperativization and Equi-NP deletion.

Both as/or brealifast and the movie are generally considered topics (or themes). If,however, we take the characterization ofa subject in (1) more seriously; then somesubjects (such as Japanese cars in (2.b) and the preverbal nominal in a passivesentence) appear less like subjects but more like topics because they occupy thesentence-initial position but don't bear any 'doing' or 'being' relationship with theverb.

The above discussion suggests that subject is an indiscrete notion: nominalsmay be typical or less typical subjects, depending on their position in the sentenceand their relationship with the verb. It also suggests that there is no clear-cutdividing line between topic and subject in English. It then appears that subject andtopic may even overlap: A subject may simultaneously serve as a topic and viceversa. Recognition of this last possibility might seem to cause some conflict orcontradiction in theory or practical operation, because topic and subject are twodistinct notions. But, in fact, it does not; for topic and subject don't operate on thesame level ofthe system-topic operates on the discourse level and subject, on thesyntactic (and therefore sentential) level.

Along this line of thinking, we will examine the status ofthe Chinese topic andits relationship with the subject below.

Tsao (1990: 170 & 326) also identifies a Mandarin topic as possessing the followingproperties:

(5.a) Topic invariably occupies the S-initial position of the first clause in atopic chain.

b) Topic can optionally be separated from the rest of the clause in which itovertly occurs by one of the four pause particles: a (ya), ne, me, and ba.

d) Topic is a supraclausal notion; it may, and often does, extend itssemantic domain to more than one clause.

e) Topic is in control of the pronominalization or deletion of all thecoreferential NPs in a topic chain.

t) Topic, except in clauses where it is also a subject, plays no role insuch processes as reflexivization, Equi-NP deletion or imperiativization.

While the properties in the two sets are stated as different, a closer examination mayuncover a number of similarities. We will look at the properties one by one in thefollowing.

Firstly, it is true that subjects are always unmarked by prepositions, as statedin (4.a); yet topics do not have to be marked by prepositions, either. E.g.

In the research literature, differences between topic and subject have often beenstressed to the point that they have dazzled and blinded the reader to the fact thatthere are many similarities between the two as well. A careful examination of thecharacteristics of both topic and subject reveals that they are just as much alike asthey are different. For example, Tsao (1990: 170) identifies the following as theproperties of a Mandarin subject:

(6) Zheben shu, wo yijing nianle san bian Ie.this-M book, I already read-PFV three time LE'This book, I have already read (it) three times.' (Tsao, 1990: 178)

c) Subject always bears some selectional relation to the main verb of thesentence.

where zheben shu 'this book' is a topic but is not marked by any preposition. Infact, in many of the examples that Tsao (1990) gives, the topics are not marked byany preposition. Secondly, we fmd that the S-initial (as stated in (5.a» or pre-verbalposition (as stated in (4.b» is the typical slot for both topics and subjects inMandarin. Only when both a topic and a subject occur separately in the same clausedo the positions make a difference: the topic occupies a position in front of thesubject. The humanness of a subject stated in (4.b) is only a tendency and cannotbe interpreted as a negative restriction on the topic, as topics may very well behuman. Thirdly, the statement in (4.d) that 'a subject tends to have specificreference' actually shows its close similarity to, rather than any difference from, a

b) By position, subject can be identified as the animate NP to the left of theverb; otherwise, the NP immediately before the verb.

topic, as the latter is always defmite or generic, as stated in (5.c). Fourthly, property(4.c) about selectional relations and property (4.e) concerning roles intransformations have most often been used to identify a subject as different from atopic. But, unfortunately, the existence of property (5.t) proves them to beunreliable: a topic is not prohibited from having selectional relations to the mainverb or playing a role in the transformations as long as it is also a subject. In thefmal analysis, there leaves only properties (5.b), (5.d) and (5.e) to identify the topicwith. (The second portion of(5.a) '[a topic appears] in the first clause in a topicchain' might also be considered a relevant feature, but there is some problem withthat statement and we will address it later.)

Here, we list the remaining properties of the topic that have survived acomparison of(4) and (5):

(9.a) Ta lai kan ni Ie, keshi ni bu zai.he come see you LE, but you not at'He came to see you, but you were not in.'

b) Ni bu shi shuo hen jiu mei jiandao fa Ie ma? Ta lai kan ni Ie.you not be say very long didn't see him LE Q he come see you LE'Didn't you say you hadn't seen him for a long time? He's coming to seeyou.'

c) Ta lai kan ni Ie, 0 hai daile jige pengyou lai ne.he come see you LE, further bring-LE a-few-M friend come NE'He came to see you (and he) brought some friends with him. '

(7.a) A topic can be optionally separated from the rest of the clause by a pauseor one of the four pause particles: a (ya), ne, me and ba. (adapted from(5.b) above)

b) Topic is a supracluasal notion: it extend its semantic domain to more thanone clause. (adapted from (5.d) above)

Sentence (8) is made a part of each of the mini-discourses in (9). In each of thecontexts, the subject fa 'he' of (8) plays a different role in terms of the relationshipbetween the clauses. In (9.a), it plays no role to relate the clauses. The clauses arerelated by the use of ni 'you' in both. Evidence for the relationship can be found ina negative way when either of the token ni is replaced by anything else and thediscourse becomes incoherent. Since the subject fa in (9.a) does not possess any ofthe properties in (7), it is not a topic in the discourse. In (9.b), the subject fa in thesecond clause serves to relate the clause to the first one by its coreferential statuswith the object fa in the first. That is, both tokens of fa refer to the same person. Inthis sense, the subject fa has the property in (7.b) and is marginally qualified fortopic.3 In (9.c), the two clauses are related not only by the coreference of the twosubjects, fa and 0, but also by the deletion of the second subject (i.e. it would be fainstead of 0 if no deletion is involved). Thus, the first subject fa possesses bothproperties in (7.b) and (7.c) and is more qualified for topic than the subject fa in(9.b).

The examples in (9) illustrate the importance of discourse context in thefunction of a nominal as a topic. It is shown that the same nominal in the sameclause may play different roles with regard to topic, depending on what precedes orfollows it. Moreover, the roles it plays may vary in the number of topic propertiesthey possess. The fa in (9.a) possesses none, the one in (9.b) possesses one, and theone in (9.c) possesses two.

The second consequence of recognizing topic as a discourse notion has to dowith marked topics. (They are considered marked topics because they occursentence-initially with markers like prepositions, there is another nominal betweenthem and the main verb is recognizable as the subject.) Discussing them in isolationmay often lead to skewed conclusions. Some of such topics are illustrated in (10)below.

c) A topic is in control of the pronominalizatin or deletion of all thecoreferential NPs in a topic chain. (adapted from (5.e) above)

The number of the surviving properties to identify a topic with might seem verysmall, but they provide a good starting point for further examination. On this basis,we will try to define what a topic is both in general and in Mandarin Chinese.

The recognition of the fact that topic is a discourse notion may have some importantconsequences. First, it naturally follows that in an isolated sentence with nodiscourse context, there is no need to decide whether a given nominal is a topic ornot. For example, in a sentence like (8) below:

(8) Ta lai kan ni Ie.he come see you LE'He came/is coming to see you.'

fa 'he' can certainly be identified as a subject by the criteria in (I.a) and (I.c) or in(4.b) and (4.c). Tsao (1990:171) also labels it as a topic. In fact, it is a mootquestion whether the nominal is also a topic unless a context is provided. The samenominal, conceivably, mayor may not function as a topic, depending on its context.Sentence (8), for instance, may occur in any of the following environments:

(I O.a) Zhege ren (a), tounao jiandan, sizhi fada. (Tsao, 1990:57)this-M person (A), mind simple, four-limb well-developed

at least misleading, if not a mistake. It is especially so when topic is considered adiscourse notion. Moreover, there must be a reason why the sentences areconstructed as topic sentences. Given the properties above, there is no way to seewhy the sentences must be constructed the way the are. Analyzing suchconstructions in isolation gives the false impression that the propertiesmentioned above are the most essential qualities oftopic and that the sentencestructures are all there is to topic. Let us take (10.d) for example. Ho treats it ashaving a thematic structure is that the topic [his theme] is explicitly signalled by atopic marker. But, on the other hand, he insists that one of the main functions oftopic is to serve as a cohesive link between the utterance that it introduces and thosethat precede it. (p.27) Discussing it in isolation as Ho does, certainly doesn't serveto discover any cohesive linking purpose.4

The foregoing discussion indicates that studying topic in isolated sentences isdestined to failure in the attempt to discover its essential qualities. This explainswhy almost all studies on topic have merely centered around its 'identifying'characteristics. Most of these characteristics, in fact, are just reflections of itsessential properties and do not serve to 'define' what a topic is. It is therefore themost important task of the present writer to distinguish qualities that are useful foridentification but are not essential properties from those essential ones that canserve to define the topic.

b) Xinfengli zhuangbujin zheixie zhaopian. (Li & Thompson, 1981 :95)envelope-in fit-not-enter these photo'These photos won't fit in the envelope.'

c) Guanyu zhege wenti, wo you yige jianyi.in-regardto thisM problem, I have aM suggestion.'In regard to this problem, I have a suggestion.'

d) Anzhao shengjing shang jiang, shen ta dingle yige shumu.by Bible in say, God he set-PFV a-M number'According to the Bible, God set a number.' (Ho, 1993:40)

The underlined portions in the examples are marked topics of the sentences forvarious reasons. The construction in (10.a) is known as 'double subject' or 'doublenominative', where two nominals occur one after the other in front of the verb. Thefirst nominal is invariably assigned a topic status because the other nominal is thesubject by being closer to the predicate and by having more usual semantic relationswith the verb. In other words, the assignment of the topic status is not done on muchpositive evidence (except the potential pause or pause particle), but by default. In(10.b), the locative phrase xinfengli 'in (the) envelope' is considered a topic,because such phrases 'set the frame within which the rest of the sentence ispresented, they are definite, referring to places ...about which the hearer alreadyknows, and they may be followed by a pause particle.' (Li & Thompson, 1981 :95)These properties, however, deserve comments. The first one 'setting the frame' isvery vague. Almost any clause-initial nominal can serve this purpose. The secondone, definiteness, is not unique to a topic: all preverbal nominals tend to be definite.(Cf., for example, Sun and Givon, 1985; Wang, 1988; but see Chap. 5, especiallySection 5.2.) That again leaves the potential pause particle alone as the onlycriterion for identifying the topic. In (10.c), duiyu zhege wenti 'in regard to thisproblem' is a prepositional phrase. As such, it is not as qualified to be the subjectas the next nominal wo 'I' (cf. (4.a) above). And it doesn't bear any semanticrelationship with the main verb (cf. (4.b) above). Ifit can not be a subject, then itmust be a topic. Again, the assignment is one by default. Similarly, in (10.d),anzhao shengjing shangjiang 'according to the Bible' is a prepositional phrasewith a nominalized clause in it and thus is not as qualified to be the subject as thenext nominal shen ta 'God he'. For no better label, it is called a topic. These, ofcourse, are considerations within the confinement of the clause structure only.

We have seen that all the designated topics in (10) are recognized as suchmainly by default. It is true that they look more like topics than anything else. But,the properties extracted from them are not necessarily essential characteristics of atopic. To defme a topic on the basis of these properties (which most analysts do) is

Chu (1993) proposes a prototype approach to the Chinese topic. He believes thatrecognized topics actually may vary in their degrees of topicality. That is, somenominals are typically usable as topics and others are less typically so. The mosttypical cases constitute the prototype that possesses all the attributes of a topic. Lesstypical ones are those that possess fewer attributes but are nonetheless recognizableas topics. Still others may have so few attributes that they appear marginal in theirbeing recognized as topics. Finally, there are non-topics which have none of theattributes. In other words, the higher degree of topicality a nominal is, the morelikely it is used for a topic.

To define the prototype, Chu (1993:37) presents a list of hierarchical attributesof a Mandarin Chinese topic as follows:

a. Being a nominalb. Serving as an interclausallink

The reason that O/ta in (13) is more likely to be interpreted as 'the wall' than as'salamanders' is that the former possesses one more topic attribute than the latterand is thus more easily recognizable as the topic. This easy recognition is thentransferred to the interpretation of the O/ta in the following clause as 'the wall'.Some would argue that the reason why the interpretation of O/ta as 'the wall' ismore likely than as 'many salamanders' is the agreement in number, i.e. ta and 'thewall' are both singular. But it is a well-known fact that ta can be used as an unifierfor plural nouns in the object position. (Cf. Chao, 1968:634.)

Before we give some more examples to show how the prototype approachworks, we summarize Chu's (1993) position in the following:

a. Being specific/referentialb. Occupying the sentential-initial/preverbal position

Though it is obvious that the attributes are extracted from the lists of properties byprevious researchers, Chu has screened them through a study of different types oftopics and a survey of native speakers on a short text. By recognizing both facts thatthe attributes ofthe Chinese topic are hierarchical in nature and that Chinese topicsmay not always possess all these attributes, Chu is able to explain certain problemsthat have hitherto been a puzzle to, and a dispute among, Chinese grammarians. Forexample:

(12) Qiangshang pazhe hen duo bihu. (Li and Thompson, 1981 :95)wall-on crawl-DUE very many salamander'The wall has a lot of salamanders on it/There are many salamanderscrawling on the wall.'

(14) While it doesn't make much sense to ask whether or not a nominalis a topic within the context of an isolated clause, any nominal maybe judged by the qualities in (11) above as to its potential to becomea topic. A nominal may possess all, some or only one (i.e. being anominal) of the qualities listed in (11) and therefore may vary fromhaving a very high to a very low potential for becoming a topic. Thenominal that possesses all the qualities is a prototypical topic inChinese.

While Li and Thompson claim that Qiangshang 'on the wall' in (12) is the topic,other grammarians contend that the topic is rather hen duo bihu 'very manysalamanders', (See Li, 1991.) Judged by the attributes in (11), however, both arequalified for topic and one is only a little more likely to be a topic than the other.Qiang(shang) is a nominal, it is defmite (and therefore specific), and it occupies thesentence-initial position. It has one primary attribute and two secondary ones. Onthe other hand, hen duo bihu is a nominal, and it is specific. It also has a primaryattribute but only one secondary one. As both possess some topic attributes both ofthem are possible candidates for topic. But, since Qiang(shang) has one moresecondary attribute than hen duo bihu, it is more likely to become a topic than theother. To demonstrate this fact, we use another clause to follow (12), as in (13):

Nominals that possess a large number of topic qualities are said to be high intopicality. Those with fewer such qualities are lower in topicality.

The following examples in (15)-(19) illustrate how the prototype approachexplains topicality in longer stretches of discourse. All of them are presented intheir original organization, i.e. 'sentences' are divided where there is a period in theoriginal text. Example (15) below shows how a most eligible nominal is picked upas a topic. This way of organizing a topic usually enhances smooth reading.

(15.a) Zai zhege Hong-Song-Cun zhong, hao xia qi de ren bu duo,at this-M Red-Pine-Village in, like play chess DE person not many,

o ye you ge jishi haozi.5

but have STRESS several-ten people.

(13) Qiangshang pazhe hen duo bihu, bie qu pang O/ta.wall-on crawl-DUE very many salamander, don't go touch O/it/them

(i) 'The wall has a lot of salamanders crawling on it, don't touch it.(ii) 'There are a lot of salamanders crawling on the wall, don't touch them.'

'In this Red Pine Village, though there are not many who like to playchess, yet there are several dozens of them.'

Both translations (i) and (ii) are possible. But (i) is more natural than (ii), justbecause the O/ta in (13) is more likely interpreted as 'the wall' (as is indicated byit in translation (i)) than as 'salamanders' (as is indicated by them in translation (ii)).

b) Diaoyun Gu Zhang ke suan ming-lie-qian-mao.Transportation Section Chief can be-counted among-the-best'The Transportation Director is among the best.'

c) Mei feng Nian-Jie kaizhan xiangqi bisai,every-time when New-Year start elephant -chess tournament,

wanliang jiacai, dan 0 linse de hen.1O,000-tael family-wealth, but stingy DE very

o zong shi tou wu-ming zhi-nei.always be first five-place within 'This Magistrate was an expert in embezzlement. Though he had

accumulated a wealth of 10,000 taels of silver (by embezzlement), hewas extremely stingy.''In every New-Year Chinese chess tournament, (he) is never lower than

the fifth place.'b) Zhu Zhishan zhidao ci ren dixi, 0 juexin jiao ta

Zhu Zhishan know this person bottom-detail, be-determined make himThe passage in (15) is made up of three 'sentences' (a), (b) and (c). In the firstclause of (a), there are two nominals Hong Song Cun (zhong) 'Red Pine Village(inside)' and hao xia qi de ren 'people who like to play chess.' As nominals, bothof them should be eligible for topic. But, as the former is contained in aprepositional phrase headed by zai 'at', it is not directly involved as a clauseconstituent and cannot participate in the competition for topichood. As a non-topic,it cannot corefer with any unifier in the next clause. Thus, the 0 can only coreferwith hao xia qi de ren 'people who like to play chess'. Though (b) and © arepresented as separate sentences, they are linked by the 0 in (c), which corefers withDiaoyun Gu Zhang 'Transportation Director'. One might ask why the 0 can'tcorefer with any of the other nominals which are closer to it than Diaoyun GuZhang? The answer is, again, the other nominals (i.e. Nian Jie 'New Year' andxiangqi bisai 'Chinese chess tournament') are not as qualified to be a topic asDiaoyun Gu Zhang is. The interpretation, of course, is also helped by the semanticrelation between the human noun and the predicate zai tou wuming zhinei 'withinthe top five places.' (This certainly is a piece of negative evidence against topicshaving no semantic relations with the main verb.) On the other hand, proximitydoesn't seem to count in terms of topic eligibility, though we will see later that itdoes count in topic continuity when there is some competition.

In (15), we have recognized two topics, hao xia qi de ren 'people who like toplay chess' in (a) and Diaoyun Gu Zhang 'the Transportation Director' in (b). Butthey can not be so recognized just by the organization of the clause in which eachof them occurs. They don't become topics until a coreferring unifier is identified ina following clause. Here, both anaphors are in the form of O.In the case of DiaoyunGu Zhang, no unifier is found until two clauses later.

The next text is a further illustration of how the most eligible nominals arecontinued on as topics.6 It also exemplifies other nominals performing an inter-clausal or inter-sentential linking function, though they are not qualified for topicin the particular case.

po-dian-cai, 0 guyi kai-da-kou, 0 yao erbailiang yinzipay-a-price, intentionally, open-big-mouth, ask 200-tael silver

o cai ken dong-bi.only-then willing start-painting

'Zhu Zhishan knew this person inside and out and was determined tomake him pay a price. So he asked for a hefty 200-taels of silver beforehe would start (on the painting).'

c) Nashi, erbailiang bu shi yige xiao shumu, 0 xiangdangyu yihuthat-time,200-tael not be a-M small amount, correspond-to a-M

zhongdeng renjia de caichan, Taishou nali shede O?middle-class family DE wealth, Magistrate how willing-to-part-with

'At that time, 200 taels of silver was not a small amount (of money)and was about the worth of a middle-class family. How on earth wouldthe Magistrate give away (so much)?' (Shen,1987:18)

(16.a) Zhege Taishou shi ge gua-dipi de nengshou, suiran 0 gualethis-M Magistrate be M embezzle DE expert, though embezzle-PFV

In each of the original 'sentences' (a), (b) and (c), the initial nominal (i.e. the oneunderlined) is the most topical in nature and as a result all the subsequent zero-anaphors corefer with this initial nominal. Similar to the phenomena in (15), theintervening nominals between the topic and the zero-anaphors do not figure in thetopical coreference because they are lower in topicality.

However, it doesn't mean that low-topicality nominals cannot serve as linksbetween clauses or sentences. The nominal ci ren 'this person' in (b), for example,serves an inter-sentential linking function by coreferring with zhege Taishou 'thisMagistrate' in (a). In the second clause of (b), ta 'he' corefers with ci ren 'thisperson' in the first clause to provide an interclausallink. But, compared with zhegeTaishou and its zero-anaphors in (a) and Zhu Zhishan and its zero-anaphors in (b),the two nominals in question are less topical and thus are not regarded as topicsdespite their linking function. They link by providing lexical cohesion. (Halliday

& Hasan, 1967) The choice of anaphoric fonns (e. g. between ci ren 'this person' ,ta 'he/she' and 0) will be discLissed in Chapter 8.

The next example illustrates a dubious case of topic. c) Zhe shi chuan ne, zhenghao daole Gu Shan, daolethis time boat NE, happen-to reach-PFV Gu Hill, reach-PFV

(17) Yijiuwuliu nian, Dang-Zhongyang tichule 'bai-hua-qi-fang,1956 year, party-central propose-PFV 'I OO-flower-together-bloom, Hangzhou Xihu de Gu Shan zhe difang.

Hangzhou West-Lake DE Gu Hill this placebai-jia-zheng-ming' de jangzhen yihou, 0 zhubu xiaochule100-school-compete-voice' DE directive after, gradually eliminate-PFV 'The boat happened to have reached Gu Hill, to have reached Gu Hill,

a place on the West Lake in Hangzhou.'renweide she Ii jinqu suo dailai de buliang yingxiang.artifically set-up off-limit-area SUO bring DE evil effect d) Zhege difang ne, jiushi you yige hen zhumingde jingzhi, jiaozuo

this-M place NE, that-is has a-M very famous scenery, called'After the Party Authorities enforced the policy of"IOO flowers bloomtogether and 100 schools (of thought) compete together" in 1956, theevil effects brought upon by artifically setting up off-limit areas weregradually eliminated. '

Duan Qiao, jiao Duan Qiao.Broken Bridge, called Broken Bridge

'This place, that is, has a very famous scenery, called Broken Bridge, callBroken Bridge.'

There is a zero-unifier in the second clause. It is not clear whether it corefers withDang-Zhongyang 'the Party Authorities' orjangzhen 'directive/policy'. It wouldseem that 'the Party Authorities', due to its high topicality, should be a more likelytopic for the zero-unifier to corefer with. But, since the first clause is quite like apresentative structure, the highly infonnative nominal in the object position is alsoa likely candidate to be picked up as a topic in the discourse.

The following example illustrates how a nominal with low-topicality cancontinue as a topic.

e) Ta jiu zai qiao xia bi fengyu.he then at bridge under shelter wind-rain'He sought shelter from the rain stonn under the bridge.'

(Ho,1993:195-6)

fengyu dazuo, xiaqileyulai.wind-rain heavy, rain-PFV-INCH

As a main participant in the narrative, Xu Xian is the topic of the whole story. Heis either referred to as ta or O. Nevertheless, in the absence of the main topic,something else may be used as a sub-topic of the narrative or descriptive. Forexample, chuan 'boat' in (c) serves as a sub-topic by coreferring with youchuan'pleasure boat' in (b); and zhege difang 'this place' in (c) and (d) fonn a sub-topic.The qiao 'bridge' in (e), however, doesn't serve as a topic in spite of its coreferencewith Duan Qiao 'Broken Bridge' in (d). The reason is that in the same clause thereis another nominal, ta, which is much higher in topicality than qiao. If (l8.e) issubstituted for by something like (l8.e') below, then qiao 'bridge' would be a topic.

(18.a) Keshi [Xu Xian] zai you Xihu de shihou ne,7 buqiao zhenghaobut [Xu Xian] at tour West-Lake DE time NE, unluckily just

'But when [Xu Xian] was touring the West Lake, there started a rainstonn.' (18.e') Qiao xia keyi bi fengyu.

bridge under may shelter wind-rain'The bridge provides a shelter from wind and rain.'b) Ta zuo zaiyouchuan limian ne, 0 bei yushui lin de hen

he sit at pleasure-boat inside NE, by rain-water soak DE very

langbei.embarrassing

We have shown in (18) that a nominal oflow topicality relative to other nominalsin the same clause may be picked up for topic when a later nominal of hightopicality corefers with it. In (18.b), youchuan 'pleasure boat' is a low-topicalitynominal relative to the other nominal ta 'he' in the same clause. But when a

coreferring nominal chuan in (I8.e) appears with high-topicality, the two begin toform a topic-chain. (For the term 'topic-chain', see Chapter 8.) Similarly, zhegedifang 'this place' in (I8.c) is lower in topicality than chuan 'boat'. But when anidentical nominal appears at the beginning of the next clause, the two again beginto form a topic-chain. The relationship between Duan Qiao 'Broken Bridge' in(I8.d) and qiao 'bridge' in (I8.e) can only be regarded as lexical cohesion byreiteration (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1967) without any topical significance.

Finally, we cite another discourse block from a spoken text to illustrate hownominals may become topics by serving the function of contrast.

(I9.a) H~ole, zheyangzi ba yizhiji, banzhiji gei ta qie chengO.K. this-way BA a-M chicken, half-M chicken GEl it cut into

xiao kuai yihou, womenjiu xia guo qu shao.small piece after, we then put-in wok to cook

'O.K. after (we) take a chicken, half a chicken, and cut it into smallpieces, we may put (it) in a wok to cook.'

b) Zhege shao de shihou, shouxian ne, yao ba ji gei ta chaothis cook DE time, first NE, must BA chicken GEl it saute

shu Ie.done LE

c) Chao dao limian meiyou shu, danshi waimian ne, yijing bianlesaute tiII inside not done, but outside NE, already change-PFV

yanse cai keyi.color only-then OK

'Saute till when the outside has changed color, though the inside is notdone yet.' (Ho, 1993:239-240)

As part of a recipe, the text has 'you' or 'we' as the main running topic, whichappears as zero in all the clauses except the last two in (c). In the last two clausesthere are two sub-topics occurring one after the other: limian 'inside' and waimian'outside'. A noteworthy point about them is that when limian is newly introducedin the first clause of (c), it is not clear at all whether it is serving as a topic.8 Itstopical status remains unclear until a contrast expressed by waimian is introducedin the second clause. Evidence for this claim can be found in the fact that the pause

particle ne is more appropriate after waimian 'outside' in the second clause thanafter limian 'inside' in the first clause.

Examples (I 5)-( 19) above show the application of the prototype approach totopicality in Mandarin Chinese. It is demonstrated that it solves some controversiesconcerning the topicality of certain nominals and that it explains in a principled wayhow all nominals can be interpreted as topics or non-topics in a discourse context.

7.3. The Formation and Continuation of a Topic-ThreeStages

In Section 7.2, we mentioned that some nominals may be introduced to becometopics. This section will elaborate on the process of the formation of a topic. Thecomplete process consists of three stages: (i) introduction, (ii) pick-up and (iii)continuation. One might argue that there should also be a termination stage. Thetermination of a topic, however, is reflected in its non-continuation and/or theintroduction and pick-up of a new topic.

When a topic is introduced and goes on without any special morphological orsyntactic marking, it is called an unmarked topic. They are the ones that cannot berecognized as a topic when they are first introduced. They become topics only whenthey are picked up by a coreferring nominal, pronominal, or zero in a subsequentclause. The following text illustrates the formation of such an unmarked topic in itsthree stages.

(20.a) Luoyang you ge ming genu,Luoyang had M famous song-girl

b) 0 j iao Yang Zhuluo,called Yang Zhuluo

c) 0 conghui guo ren,intelligent surpass people

d) 0 yi yuyan jianqiao guan yu yishi.with language sharp-skilIful top at the-time

'In Luoyang, there was a famous female singer by the name of YangZhuluo. She was extremely intelligent and was tops for her quick wit.'

(Shen, 1987:85)

Clause (20.a) introduces two nominals, Luoyang (a place name) and ge ming genu'a famous female singer'. The latter is picked up in (b) by 0 to be the topic, whichcontinues with the O's in (c) and (d). This is typical of an opening passage ofa story.It usually begins with a presentative sentence, followed by a description of what hasjust been presented as new information, i.e. 'a famous female singer', in this case.Strictly speaking, Ge ming genu 'a famous female singer' in (a) does not reallybecome a topic until the 0 appears in (b), though it is expected to be one. But sincethe nominal and the 0 are next to each other, clause (a) and (b) are often regardedas one clause and the nominal ge ming genu is mistaken as a topic even before itbecomes one.

Two questions arise at this point. (i) How does the hearer know that the first 0in (b) corefers with ge ming genu 'a famous female singer' rather than Luoyang, theplace name? In fact, Luoyang is even more qualified for topic than ge ming genuby their topicality. (ii) Can Luoyang be picked up as a topic by a coreferringexpression?

There are two points to make in answer to (i). The first is semantic relations tothe predicate in (20.b). As the object nominal is a personal name and the verbjiaoidentifies the object with the subject, the 0 in the subject position has to refer to aperson. It is thus decided that the 0 corefers with the preceding human nominal geming genu 'a famous female singer'. Secondly, it is true that in terms of topicality,Luoyang is more likely to become a topic. Yet the purpose of (20.a) as apresentative construction is to introduce something new to be talked about. Thus,it is more natural to go on with what has just been introduced as new informationthan with the preverbal nominal carrying old information. This brings us to question(ii): Can Luoyang be picked up as a topic by a coreferring expression? The answeris a qualified yes, though it would not be as natural as otherwise. For example,(20.a) may be followed by a clause as in (20') below to make Luoyang into a topic:

(21.a) Zuotian yige pengyou jiegei wo yiben shu,yesterdaya-M friend loan-to me a-M book

b) wo yiwei 0 hen haokan,I thought very interesting

c) jieguo 0 yidian yisi ye meiyou,result a-little meaning also not-have

d) suoyi,therefore,

o wo kanle jiye,I read-PFVa-few-pages

e) 0 jiu bu kan Ie.then not read LE

'A friend loaned me a book yesterday. I thought it would be interesting,(but) it turned out to be boring. So, I read a few pages and stopped(reading it).'

(One modification has been made in the text: The original has two O's in clause (e),one for wo and the other for neiben shu; we have omitted the one for wo just tomake the text easier to read.) Four nominals are introduced in (a): zuotian'yesterday',yige pengyou 'a friend', wo 'I' andyiben shu 'a book'. All of them areeligible for topic. Both wo and yiben shu are selected to be topics to go on with.The 0 in (b) picks u~ yiben shu as the topic and the O's in (c), (d) and (e) continueon the same topic. In this text, the topic is not introduced by a presentativesentence but by a narrative clause where more than one nominal is involved.

The establishment of a topic does not always go through the complete processof three stages. One or two of them may sometimes be lacking. An introductionwithout the other two stages, of course, will not establish a topic firmly enough.This happens more often in speech than in writing and more often in conversationthan in monologues. What happens often is that a nominal is introduced and pickedup as topic without being further continued on. But in a narrative, a topic usuallygoes on longer than just the first two stages, even when there may be someinterruption. Such interruption, on the other hand, may occur with an introductionof a new topic without continuing on it very far. Let's look at example (18),reproduced as (22) below, and take it as an illustration for short topic spans.

(20'.a) Luoyang you ge ming genu,Luoynag has M famous song-girl,

b) 0 hai you ge wunu,still have M dance-girl

c) 0 ye yiyang you mingoalso same have fame

In (20'), the 0 in (a) corefers with Luoyang in (b). The passage is admittedly not asnatural as (20), but it is by no means impossible. In fact, it would be a lot morenatural for (20'.b)-(20'.c) to follow (20) as a whole.

The introduction of a nominal to be a topic, however, may take a different(22.a) Keshi [Xu Xian] zai you Xihu de shihou ne,

but [Xu Xian] at tour West-Lake DE time NE,

buqiao zhenghao fengyu dazuo, xiaqileyulai.unluckily just wind-rain heavy, rain-PFV-INCH

'But when [Xu Xian] was touring the West Lake, there started a rainstorm.'

place' in (d), which picks up from the preceding identical form in (c) as a topic.This new topic, again, does not go on any further and is terminated by theresumption of the main topic in (e) in the form of la.

In the short passage in (22), the main topic is interrupted twice: by fengyu'wind-rain' in (a) and by chuan 'boat' in (c). Fengyu is introduced but is not pickedup as a topic; chuan is introduced and picked up as a topic but is not continued onany further. The topic chuan is then terminated by zhege difang 'this place' in (d),which picks up the preceding identical form to become a topic. This new topic,without going on any further, is terminated by another resumption of the main topic.There is another nominal, Duan Qiao 'Broken Bridge' introduced in (d) but it is notpicked up as a topic. It rather goes on as a non-topic in the form of qiao 'the bridge'in a prepositional phrase in (e).

This passage thus illustrates three kinds of nominals with regard to being atopic. (i) A nominal may be introduced, picked up and goes on as a topic for a longwhile. Xuxian in (22) is such a nominal: it is picked up by la and goes on in theform of O. In fact, it is interrupted and resumed more than once. (ii) A nominal maybe introduced and picked up as a topic but without going on any further. (You)chuan and zhege difang in (22) are such nominals. (iii) A nominal may beintroduced but not picked up as a topic, though it may be referred to later in a non-topical position. Fengyu and Duan Qian are such nominals in (22). This passagealso illustrates that it is not always the most eligible nominal that is picked up as thetopic.

It is interesting to note that the clauses headed by the main topic form the story-line of the narrative while those headed by the other topics are just asides. Thesetwo classes of clauses correspond very well to what is traditionally calledforeground and background. Naturally, the background clauses do not stay on asingle topic for a long time and they shift from one topic to another as supportingmaterials to set the scene for the main events to occur in the story-line.

In this section, we have claimed that there are three stages in the formation andcontinuation of a topic: introduction, pick-up and continuation. Examples (20)-{2 I)illustrate how the process occurs in a text. Example (22) illustrates several facts: (i)the most eligible nominal in a clause is not necessarily picked up as the topic,though it is most likely to be one; (ii) a nominal may just be picked up as a topicwithout going on any further as such; and (iii) a topic may be interrupted andresumed a number of times.

Most of the topics we have discussed so far are unmarked. There are topics thatare marked, i.e. topics accompanied by special morphological and syntacticmarking. They behave differently in their formation than those we have discussedand should be considered unusual (hence, the term 'marked') in nature.Unfortunately, they have been the main subject of discussion in most textbooks andresearch papers to the exclusion of the unmarked ones. Such an approach has giventhe impression that they are the normal topics. To correct the wrong impression, wewill discuss them in some detail in the next section.

b) Ta zuo zai youchuan limian ne, 0 bei yushui lin de henhe sit at pleasure-boat inside NE, by rain-water soak DE very

langbei.embarrassing

c) Zhe shi chuan ne, zhenghao daole Gu Shan, daole Hangzhouthis time boat NE, happen-to reach-PFV Gu HilI, reach-PFV Hangzhou

Xihu de Gu Shan zhege difang.West-Lake DE Gu HilI this place

'The boat happened to have reached Gu Hill, to have reached Gu HilI,a place on the West Lake in Hangzhou.'

d) Zhege difang ne, jiushi you yige hen zhumingde jingzhi, jiaozuothis-M place NE, that-is has a-M very famous scenery, called

Duan Qiao, jiao Duan Qiao.Broken Bridge, called Broken Bridge

e) Ta jiu zai qiao xia bi fengyu.he then at bridge under shelter wind-rain'He sought shelter from the rain storm under the bridge.'

Xuxian, the male protagonist, forms the main topic of this passage. It appears in thefirst clause of (a) but is interrupted by fengyu 'wind-rain' in the second clause.Fengyu, however, does not go on as a topic; only part of it, yu 'rain', is repeated inthe next clause in a post-verbal position, which indicates low topicality. The maintopic is resumed by the pronoun la 'he' in the first clause of (b) and goes on to thenext clause in the form of O. In (c), the main topic is again interrupted by chuan'boat', which picks up fromyouchuan 'pleasure boat' in (b) as a topic. This newtopic is not further continued on but is terminated right away by zhege difang 'this

Six types of marked topics are generally discussed. As the topics are clearly markedmorphologically or syntactically, they can be easily recognized within theboundaries of the clause or sentence in which they occur without any larger context.This is the reason why most grammars, especially sentence grammars, use them todemonstrate what a topic is like. As they are specially marked one, they don't reallyrepresent the general operation of topic. For this reason, we treat them separatelyfrom unmarked topics.

The six types of marked topics are listed and illustrated below. 10

Type I: Double-Nominal Construction. This is perhaps the most general typeoftopic marking. It is characterized by two nominals occurring one after the otherat the beginning of a clause. II E.g.

(23) Zheke shu, hua xiao, yezi da, 0 bu haokan.this-M tree, flower small, leave big, not good-looking'This tree, with small flowers and big leaves, is not good looking.'

(Adapted from Li & Thompson, 1981:94)

The topic zheke shu 'this tree' is marked by its syntactic position, i.e. as the first oftwo successive nomina Is at the beginning of a clause. By virtue of its syntacticposition, zheke shu is recognized as a topic within the first clause zheke shu, huaxiao. There is no need to go further to another clause to confirm this recognition,though the last clause 0 bu haokan '(it is) not good-looking' does further indicatethat zheke shu is the topic. In a sense, the first appearance of zheke shu is notexactly the introduction of a new entity to be picked up or continued on as a topic.One cannot start a conversation with (23) unless there is a tacit understandingbetween the speaker and the hearer as to which tree it refers to. The understandingmay come from a linguistic or non-linguistic context. In other words, the entity 'thistree' must have already been explicitly or implicitly introduced before (23) can beuttered. As long as a nominal represents' given information' (cf. Chapter 5), it mayoccur as the topic in this structure whether or not it has been explicitly introduced.Thus, this type of topic may not go through the stage of introduction in itsformation. For a detailed structural description of the double-nominative, see Tsao(1990: 122-149).

Under Type I, there are several sub-types, which vary in the nature of the firstnominal or in the form of the second one. They are illustrated below in (24)-(26).The labels are adopted from Ho (1993 :31-61).

day-day buy groceries, I really not know ought buy what good'(Having to do) grocery shopping every day, I really don't know what tobuy.' (Li & Thompson, 1981:98)

b) Zheci shijian, ta shi lao yibei zhong zui you guqi de.this-M event, he be old generation among most have integrity DE'In this event, he displayed the most moral integrity among theolder generation.' (Ho, 1993:33)

a) Mingtian keneng ta hui lai.tomorrow possible he will come'Tomorrow it is possible that he will come.'

b) Zhongguo de nanfang, tianqi juishi hu qing hu yu.China DE south, weather just-is suddenly clear suddenly rainy

'As for the southern part of China, the weather is full of changes, suddenlyclearing up and suddenly raining.' (Ho, 1993:37)

a) Zhexie keliande haizi, tamende fumu dou si zai diren de tudaothese poor kids, their parents all die at enemy DE butcher-knife

zhixia.under

'These poor children, their parents were all butchered by the enemy.'(Ho,1993:58)

b) Zhexie zang dongxi, ni gankuai ba ta na-zou.these dirty stuff, you hurry BA it take-away

'This dirty stuff, take it out right away.'

The examples in (24)-(26) are all isolated sentences. But, the topics in them areeasily identified because they are syntactically marked-being the first nominal ofa series of two. Other sub-types such as a patient-topic with a zero-subject, are alsopossible, but we will not go any further into their details. In all cases, the firstnominal represents 'given information' and does not go through the first stage ofintroduction as a topic.

other types (e.g. sentence (26.a) above). In fact, any topic can be followed by apotential pause or pause particle. Nevertheless, a pause or pause particle doesexplicitly mark a topic.

(27.a) Beijing chengli ya, you ge Gu-Gong.Beijing city-inside VA, exist MOld-Palace'Inside Beijing City, there is a Palace Museum.'

b) Jianglai de wenti ne, na jiu deng jianglai zai shuo.future DE problem NE, that then wait future then talk'As for problems of the future, (they) can wait until the future before wedeal with them.' (Chao, 1968:802)

Each of the first nominals is followed by a pause particle ya or ne in the examples.The nominal must either be definite (Beijing chengli 'Inside of Beijing City') orcontrastive (jianglai de wenti 'problems of the future'). Sentence (27.b) must followsome statement like 'The current problem can be resolved but...' (Cf. Section 4.3.2.)Thus, the topics of this type also carries 'given information' and doesn't go throughthe first stage of topic formation. Admittedly, there are cases where the topic witha following pause particle may not be definite in its strict sense. E.g.

(28) yige ren ne, xindi yiding bu neng huai.a-M person NE, heart must not can bad'A person must not have an evil mind.'

where yige ren 'a person' is not exactly definite. However, as the interpretation ofthe nominal is a generic one, it behaves much like a definite nominal. Another wayof looking at the problem is to go through the informativeness level, where apreverbal constituent is low in informative value. (Cf. Section 5.2.) As a result,whether or not the constituent carries given information becomes a moot question.

. Type III: Introduced by Prepositions Like Zhiyu, Duiyu, etc. The topic somtroduced usually has a pick-up function. It either picks up from somethingpreviously introduced or implied, or resumes from an interrupted topic. E.g.

(29.a) Wo xianzai zhi xiang wancheng xueye. Zhiyu biye hou ganI now only think-of finish study. as-for graduate after do

shenme, wo hai mei kaolu.what, I yet not consider

'Now I am only thinking of finishing my study. As to what I will do aftergraduation, I have no plan yet.' (Ho. 1993:33)

I

~

b) Jiu wo ganggangjiang de nage sumu, ruguo shen dingde zhemeas-for I just-now mention DE that number, if God set-DE so

duo, you ... zheme duo ren yao dejiu, dagai zai zhexie renmany, have ...this many people need redeem, probably at these people

dou dejiu de shihou ne, jiu shi Yesu zai lai de shihou.all redeem DE time NE, then be Jesus again come DE time

'As far as the number I mentioned just now, i.e. there are so manydesignated by God to be redeemed, the day they are all redeemed is theday when Jesus will come again.' (Ho, 1993:233)

The topic in (29.a), biye hou gan shenme 'what to do after graduation' introducedby zhiyu 'as for', is implied in the previous utterance 'now I am only thinking offmishing my study'. As the topic carries 'given information', it does not go througha separate first stage of topic formation, i.e. introduction. The topic in (29.b), woganggangjiang de nage shumu 'the number that I just mentioned' is preceded bythe preposition jiu 'as for'. It functions to pick up on the nominal yige shumu 'anumber (of people that God set to redeem)', which is mentioned 14 lines earlier inthe text. In other words, the nominal is first introduced but is not picked up as atopic until 14 lines later. Because of the distance, the nominal needs to be repeated(instead of using a pronoun or a zero unifier) pointing out that it was firstintroduced some time ago, and to be specially marked by a preposition jiu. Theintroduction stage in the formation of the topics in (29) is quite different from thatof the unmarked topics.

Type IV: Comparison. It is well known that what is being compared in aChinese sentence must be expressed as topics. The comparison structure cantherefore be considered a marker of topic.

(30.a) Ta lai Taibei bi wo qu Xianggang fangbian.he come Taibei compared-to I go Hong-Kong convenient'It is more convenient for him to come to Taipei than for me to go toHong Kong.' (Tsao, 1990:289)

b) Ta lanqiu gen parqlU da de yiyang hao.he basketball and volleyball play DE same well'He plays basketball as skillfully as volleyball.'

(Adapted from Tsao, 1990:290)

c) Wo (jintian) meiyou zuotian neme shufu.(today) not-as yesterday that comfortable

'I am not feeling as well (today) as yesterday.'(Adapted from Li and Thompson, 1981 :566-7)

are other contrasts that are morpho-syntactically unmarked. In the latter case, it isalways prosodically marked, i.e. with a contrastive stress. E.g.

The entities being compared are considered either primary or secondary topics(Tsao, 1990:289-297). One or both of the two compared items may be newlyintroduced and become a topic/topics instantaneously through the comparisonstructure. They do not go through the first stage of introduction before they arepicked up as topics.

(32) Ni bu chi niurou, chi yu ba.you not eat beef, eat fish BA

'(If) you don't eat beef, why don't you have fish.'

Type V: The 'Lian ...Dou/Ye' Construction. This construction is used tosingle out a member of a set that is least expected to fit the context.

The contrast is on niurou 'beef and yu 'fish'. There is no syntactic ormorphological marking for the contrast except juxtaposition, but at least the seconditem yu must be stressed. The same proposition can be expressed with syntacticmarking as either (a) or (b) in the following:

31.a) Lao Zhang lian E Yu dou hui shuo.Old Zhang even Russian also know-how-to speak'Old Zhang can even speak Russian.'

(33.a) Ni bu chi niurou, yu chi ba.you not eat beef, fish eat BA

b) Ta lian da zi ye bu renshi jige.he even big character also not know a-few-M'He doesn't even know the ABC of (Chinese) characters.'

b) Niurou ni bu chi, yu chi ba.beef you not eat, fish eat BA

The interpretation of (33), however, is not a suggestion like (32), but a mildquestion 'If you don't eat beef, you would eat fish, wouldn't you?' With asyntactically explicit topic, as in (33), a suggestion seems to be less likely thanwhen there is no such topic, as in (32).

ta dou ting bu dong.he all hear not understand

Type VI: The Ba- and Bei-Sentences. Both ba- and bei-sentences areconsidered patient-topicalization devices. The ba-sentence preposes the patientobject to be the secondary topic and adds a 'disposal' meaning. The bei-sentencepreposes the patient object to be the primary topic and often, though not always,takes on a pejorative meaning. (See, for example, Hsueh 1989, Tsao 1990 and Xing1993.)

'Not only can he not understand what other people say; he can't evenunderstand what I say.' (Tsao, 1990:277)

In (31.a), the nominal E Yu 'the Russian language' is introduced by tian ...ye toindicate that among the languages one expects Old Zhang to speak, Russian isprobably the last one. In this sense, there is an implicit comparison between'Russian' and the other languages. In (31.b), the assumption is that da zi 'bigcharacters (i.e. easiest characters)' is the least expected member of the set that hedoesn't know. In (31.c), the comparison is explicit: wode hua 'what I say' comparedwith biren de hua 'what other people say' is the least expected for him not tounderstand. Tsao (1990:249-278) claims that the nominal introduced bylian ...dou/ye is either a primary or secondary topic. By contrast with other membersof the same set, the item introduced by lian ...dou/ye doesn't need any explicitintroduction as a topic.

Types IV and V can actually be collapsed under the rubric of 'contrast'. Theyare, of course, morpho-syntactically marked contrasts with specific senses. There

(34.a) Zhe yifan hua zhongyu ba fa shuofu Ie.this one-M talk finally BA him convince LE'He was finally convinced by this talk.'

b) Ta ba Jangzi zhengxiule yi xia, qileqi, ranhou zai maichuqu.he BA house repair-PFV a little, paint-a-paint, afterward then sell-off

'He had the house repaired, painted, and then sold it.'(Tsao, 1990: 175)

(35.a) Wenge qIJIan, shenmeren dou bei zhengguo.Cultural-Revolution during, everybody all BEl attack-EXP'During Cultural Revolution, everybody was attacked.'

(Hsueh, 1989: 115)

b) Ta bei ren da shang Ie.he BEl someone hit wound LE'He was hit and wounded by someone.'

explicit mention in a previous context. It may even come from a dist~nt previousmention or from a contrast of various forms. The contrast ma~ be w~th a knownentity or with other members of the same class that the tOPIC entI~ belongs.Whatever the source, the given inform~tion carried by. the marked t~PICSenablesh m to be recognized as topics wIthout demandmg a precedmg ~tage ~f

~:oduction or a following stage of continuation ~ their p~ocess of format~on. ThIsspecial status of the marked topics ~ives the ~alse Im~resslOn that any tOpICcan berecognized within the clause in whIch a topIcal nom mal o~curs. As w~ have seen. S t' n 7 3 1 the more usual topic can not be recogmzed unless It serves tom ec 10 •• , ficonnect two or more clauses. More often, it c?nnects m?re th~ ~o clauses to orm'a topic chain'. We will discuss this last notIon of tOPICcham m the next chapter.

c) Qiqiu bei feng chui zou Ie.balloon BEl wind blow away LE

'The balloon was blown away by the wind.'

(Li and Thompson, 1981 :505)

The nominals after ba in (34) and those before bei in (35) are all in the patient role,i.e. the entity directly affected by the action of the verb. Apart from their syntacticrequirements and semantic interpretations, the two Structures share a commondiscourse function-making a topic out of the patient. (Cf. Tsao, 1990:168-222;Chu, 1983:206-225) The difference between them is that while the patient in thebei-sentence is a primary topic, the one in the ba-sentence is a secondary one.12As both patients are interpreted as definite, referential or generic, they must carrygiven information. They need not go through the introduction stage of topicformation.

Other Structures may also mark patient topic, e.g. the shi ...de construction andthe so-called middle voice verbs. The former does not exclusively mark the patientwhile the latter provides a very weak marking. We will just illustrate them withoutany discussion.

(36.a) Neiben shu shi Wang Jiaoshou xie de.that-M book SHI Wang Professor write DE'That book was written by Professor Wang.'

This chapter started with an examination of the s~milari:ies.and differences betweensubject and topic, in English and in Chinese. WhIle :h~lr ~I~erences had often beenstressed in the research literature, we found many slmllantJes be~een them. ~r~mthese similarities a strategy was developed to eliminate non-es~entIal. characte:lstIcsof topic and an approach is mapped out to arrive at a more relIable lIst of attrIbutesof topic. .. h

The approach that this chapter adapts IS essentIally that of Chu. (1.993~t eprototype approach. In this appro~ch, th~ attributes that define a.tOpICm Chmeseare hierarchically organized, as laId out m (11), repeated below m (37).

b) Ta shi zuo huoche lai de.he SHI sit train come DE'He came BY TRAIN/It is by train that he came.'

c) Neiben shu chuban Ie.that-M book publish LE'That book waslhas been published.'

a. Being a nominalb. Serving as an interclausallink

Sentence (36.a) marks the patient as the topic, but (36.b) marks the agent as thetopic. In (36.c) neiben shu 'that book' serves the patient role and as the topic at thesame time through the middle voice verb chuban 'to publish' but there is no overtmarking for the topic.

In this section, we have discussed several marked topics. The commoncharacteristic they share is that they all carry given information. The sources fortheir given information may vary widely. It may come from tacit understandingbetween the speaker and the hearer or it may come from implicit indication or

a. Being specific/referential ..b. Occupying the sentential-initial/preverbal posItIon

Bearing no selectional relations to the predicate verb

A prototypical topic possesses all the five attributes while a le~s prototypi~al onepossesses fewer. This approach resolves certain controverSIes concemmg the

problem of whether a given nominal should be recognized as a topic or a subject..The ~ormation ofa topic is seen in its three stages-introduction, pick-up and

contmuatIOn. Though a topic usually goes through all three stages, some topics donot.

. A ~pecial effort is made ~o distinguish between marked and unmarked topics.It ISclaImed that marked tOpICSbehave differently than unmarked ones and that itis a mistake to take the unmarked ones as typical of all topics. As marked topics are?v~rt.ly marked b~ special signals, they can be easily recognized within themdlVldual clauses m which they occur without any larger context. Moreover, they?ften d~ not go thr?ugh the first stage of introduction because they carry oldmformatlOn from varIOUSsources. Both these facts necessarily serve to obscure themost fundamental function of a topic--clause linking. Yet, discussion of topic inthe literature mostly focuses on the marked ones, very often to the exclusion of theunmarked .on~s, for the simple reason that the marked ones can be convenientlyhandle? wIthI~ a sentence or even a clause. This unfortunate practice has createda false unpresslon that the marked topics are the typical cases. The unmarked oneshave thus been largely neglected in the literature. To correct this misdirection ofstudy, this chapter has devoted a long section to the distinction between marked andunmarked topics in their behavior.. To c~nclu~e the chapter, we analyze a longer text with regard to its topicmtroductIon, pIck-up and continuation. The text is adapted from Liu Mingchen(1992:3 I0-314). The indices in subscript indicate coreference.

'The authors are two Youth League members.'

e) Tamen· xie xin to Wenyi Bao,they J write letter to Literary Gazette,

'They wrote to The Literary Gazette,'

t) O· qing wen ke bu keyi piping Yu Pingbo,J please ask may not may criticize Yu Pingbo,

'to ask if they could criticize Yu Pingbo,'

g) O. bei zhizhibuli.J BEl put-aside-not-care

'(but) were ignored.'

h) "ramen. budeyi xiexin gei tamende· muxiao-- Shandong Daxue de~I J J U· . DEthey have-to write to their alma-mater-Shandong nIVersIty

laoshi,teacher

'They were forced to write to their teachers at Shandong University-their

alma mater,'

b) OJ qing yi yue.please one read

'Please read them.'

i) O· huodele zhichi,J •recelve-PFV support

'(and) received support'

j) OJbing zai gaixiao kanwu Wen-Shi-Zhe. . shangand at that-school journal Literature-History-Philosophy on

(38.a) Bo Yu Pingbo de liangpian wenz/langj fu-shang.refute Yu Pingbo DE two-M article enclose'Enclosed are the two articles refuting Yu Pingbo.'

yanjiu quanwei zuojia de cuowu guandian de renzhende kaihuo.study authority writer de wrong view DE serious open-fire

'This is the first time over thirty years that a serious attack has beenlevelled against the wrong views of the so-called authorities on the studyof The Dream of the Red Chamber. '

dengchule tamende wenz/langk ....publish-PFV their article ...

'(and) had their article ...published in the university journal Literature-

History-Philosophy. '

c) Zh.e shi sanshi-duo nian lai xiang suowei Hong Lou MengthIS be 3D-more year since to so-called Red Chamber Dream

d) Zuoz/lej shi liangge Qingniantuan yuan.author be two-M Youth-League member

k) Went; you huidao Beijing.problem again return-to Beijing

'The problem (, however,) returned to Beijing.'

1)You ren yaoqiu O?jiang ci wenk zai Renmin Rib~o zhua~zaiexist people ask get this article at People Darty repnnt'It was suggested that the article be reprinted in The People's Daily'

n) O? zhankai piping.open-up criticism

'(and) launch (a campaign of) criticism.'

yexu keyi kaizhanqilai Ie.perhaps can open-up LE

'It looks like that a struggle against the Hu-Shih school of bourgeoisidealism in the field of classical literature, which has poisoned (the mindsof) the youth for more than thirty years, may be under way.'

m) yiqi O? yinqi zhenglun,so-that solicit debate'to start a debate,'

0) O? you. bei mou~ie ren yi zhongzhong liyou geiyi fandui,, agaIn BE~ certaIn people :vith various reason give objection(but) was objected to by certaIn people with various reasons' ,

u) Shiqing shi liangge 'xiaorenwu' 0 zuoqilai de,matter be two-M 'small-potato' do-start DE'The whole thing was set going by two "nobodies",'

p) O? buneng shixian;cannot realize

'(and) could not be carried out;'

v) er 'darenwu' p wangwang bu zhuyi, .but 'big-shot' often not pay-attentIOn'while the 'big-wigs' not only don't pay any attention (to it),'

q) jieguo chengli tuoxie,result establish compromise,'in the end a compromise was reached' ,

w) 0 bing wangwangjiayi zulan.p further often impose obstruction

'but also try to obstruct it.'

r) O?bei yunx~ zai Wenyi Bao zhuanzai ci wen k'

BEl permIt at Literary Gazette reprint this article'permission was given to reprint this article The Literary Gazette.'

s) Guangming Ribao de Wenxue Yichan Ian you fabiaoleGuangming Daily DE 'Literary Heritage' column also publish-PFV

zh.e liangge qingnian de bo Yu Pingbo Hong Lou MengthIs two-M youth DE refute Yu Pingbo Red Chamber Dream

x) Tamen tong zichanjieji zuojia zai weixinlun fangmianjiang tongyithey p with bourgeois writer at idealism respect talk united

zhenxian,front

'They are in a united front with the bourgeois writers on the question of

idealism,'

Yanjiu yi shu de wenzhang.Study a book DE article

y) 0 ganxin zuo zichanjieji de fuluo.P willing be bourgeois DE captive

'(and) become willing captives of the bourgeoisie.'

z) Zhe tong yingpian Qinggong Mishi he Wuxun Zhuanr fangyingthis with film Qing-Court Secret and Wuxun Story play

'The "Litera~ Heritage" column of The Guangming Daily carried.~nother artIcle of the two young men refuting Yu Pingbo's Studies onThe Dream of Red Chamber".'

shihou de qingxing jihu shi xiangtong de,time DE situation almost be same DE

t) Kanyangzi z/J.egefandui zai gudai wenxue lingyu duhai qingnianseem thls-M oppose at classic literary area poison youth

sanshiyu nian de HU-Sh.ipai zichanjieji weixinlun de douzheng,3D-plus year DE Hu-Shl camp Bourgeois idealism DE struggle,

'The case was almost the same as when the films The Inside Stories of theQing Court and The Life of WU Xun were played,'

aa) Or bei ren chengwei aiguozhuyi yingpian.BEl people call patriotism film

bb) Er shiji shi maiguozhuyi yingpian Qinggong Mishi s zaibut in-fact be treason film Qing-Court Inside-Stories at

quanguo fangying zhihou, zhijin 0 s meiyou bei pipan.whole-country play after, up-to-now didn't BEl criticize

'In fact, the Inside Stoires of the Qing Courts has not been criticizedsince its nation-wide showing. '

cc) Wuxun Zhuant suiran pipanle, zhijin 0t meiyou yinchu jiaoxun.Wuxun Story though criticize-PFV, up-to-now didn't lead-to lesson

'Though The Life of Wuxun was criticized, yet nobody has learned anylesson from it.'

dd) You chuxianle O? rongren Yu Pingbo weixinlun he zulanagain appear-PFV tolerate Yu Pingbo idealism and obstruct'

'xiaorenwu'de hen you shengqi de pipan wenzhang de qiguai shiqing.small-potato' DE very have life DE criticize article DE strange thing

'(Now) this strange thing has happened that (people) are tolerating YuPingbo's idealism and trying to suppress the energetic critique by"nobodies".'

ee) Zhe shi zhide women zhuyi de.this be worth our attention DE

'This is something worth our attention.'

ft) Yu Pingbo zheyilei de zichanjieji zhishijenziy, dangranshi O? yingdangYu Pingbo this-kind DE bourgeois intellectual, of-course should

dui tameny caiqu tuanjie taidu de.to them adopt united attitude DE

'To the kind of bourgeois intellectuals like Yu Pingbo, of course, (we)should form a united front,'

gg) dan O? yingdang pipan tamendey duhai qingnian de cuowu sixiang,but should criticize their poison youth DE wrong idiology,

O?buyingdang dui tameny touxiang .. not-should to them surrender

'but (we) should criticize their wrong ideology that has poisoned the youthand (we) should not surrender to them.'

Some explanations are in order.One obvious anomaly is the 'O;in many of the clauses. It indicates that the

position should be filled by a nominal but the reference of such a nominal is vague,general or non-referential. It is in some sense equivalent to the English impersonalpronoun 'you', 'they' or 'we'. In many cases, the clause would be expressed in thepassive form in English. We thus do not count them as topics. For example, thereare three such markings in (ff)-(gg). They are translated as 'we', but could verywell be 'people', 'comrades', etc.

Certain nominals have a definite interpretation when they appear for the firsttime in the text. They are zhe 'this' in (c), (z) and (ee), wenti 'the problem' in (k),and those portions in bold but without indexing in (s), (t) and (u), each referring tosome previous event either implied in the context or through tacit understanding ofthe reader. All are qualified to be topics but none of them is picked up as a topic togo on. Other first-time definite nominals like bo Yu Pingbo de liangpian wenzhang'the two articles refuting Yu Pingbo' in (a) and zuozhe 'the authors' in (d) have theirsources in previous contexts. As the text is not the very beginning of a piece ofwriting, the first clause follows from some previous mention of refuting Yu. Thus,the first nominal carries given information and is interpreted as definite. Otherwise,it would have appeared after the predicate verb fu-shang 'be enclosed'. The othernominal zuozhe 'the authors' is obviously implied in wenzheng 'the articles' in (a)and carries given information, too. The given information they carry, however,doesn't necessarily guarantee them to become full-fledged topics, though it is mostlikely that both of them will. Within the individual clauses where they appear, thereare some qualities to indicate that they will become topics. In the first case in (a),the nominal is a preposed object and as it is the only nominal in the clause, it hasto be the topic to be continued on in the text if any cohesion is to be achieved. It isconceivable, however, that clause (d), instead of clause (b), might follow (a)directly. If so, bo Yu Pingbo de liangpian wenzhang 'the two articles refuting YuPingbo' would not become a topic. The continuity (i.e. cohesion) betweenwenzhang 'article' and zuozhe 'author' would have to rely on the fact that articleshave authors. In fact, clause (d), as it is, does refer back to the mention of wenzhangin (a) to achieve continuity. The nominal zuozhe 'author' in (d), however, is not yeta topic until it is picked up by tamen 'they' in (e). The same topic goes on all theway through clause (j) by means of the anaphors 0 and tamen with a 'j' index. Theuse of tamen instead of 0 is a strategy of 'paragraphing', which will be discussedin the next chapter.

Other indexed topics start with xiaorenwu 'small potatoes' in (u), darenwu 'big

shots' in (v), Qinggong Mishi 'The Inside Stories of the Qing Court' and WuxunZhuan 'The Life ofWuxun' in (z) and Yu Pingbo zheyilei de zichanjieji zhishifenzi'the kind of bourgeois intellectuals like Yu Pingbo' in (ft). When they first appearin the text, there is nothing to warrant that they, though more often definite than not,will be topics. In most cases, they are picked up by either a pronoun or a 0 tobecome a topic. Sometimes, the topic goes on further, e.g. clause (v) through (y)where darenwu 'big shots' is the topic. Other times, it does not go on any further,e.g. xiaorenwu 'small potatoes' in (u), which is recognizable as a topic only by thecontrast provided in the next clause. The topical status of the tamen's in (ft) and(gg) may seem questionable because they are not even in preverbal positions. But,as long as they serve a linking function between clauses and there are no otherobvious nominals or anaphors competing with them for topical status, they can beconsidered topics. (The O?'s are non-topics.) This is one of the reasons why theclause-initial or preverbal position as a topical attribute is placed on the second tierof the hierarchy in (37).

Another set of nomina Is serve to link between clauses but do not occur inclause-initial or preverbal positions are tamende wenzhang 'their article' in U) andci wen 'this article' in (I) and (r). But they have been disrupted by other equallyeligible though non-topical nominals and those O;s. They therefore have to appearas full lexical nouns instead of any other anaphorical form and can not be countedas topics without special markings or without going through the process of topicformation.

There are certain problems in interpreting such nominals as you ren 'there arepeople' in clause (I) with regard to the question whether they are picked up as topicsby, for instance, the 0 in (m) or any subsequent one. We will refrain from going anyfurther on this problem for fear of deviating too far from the main theme ofdiscussion. In sum, we have demonstrated several points by the text in (38). (i)Normally, there are more unmarked topics than marked ones. (ii) When a nominalfirst appears, there is no guarantee that it will become a topic even when it carriesgiven information. (iii) Topics may go on for a short span of time (i.e. within twoclauses) or for a longer span (i.e. through more clauses). But no topics servethrough one clause only with the exception of marked ones, e.g. xiaorenwu 'smallpotatoes' in (u), which is recognized as a topic by contrast and, strangely enough,seems to carry new information. The seeming contradiction can be resolved by thefact that a topic can be high in the value of informativeness.

3. The reason for designating the subject of the second clause, rather than theobject of the first clause, as a marginal topic will become clear when we discuss theintroduction and continuation of topic in Section 7.3.

4. Example (10.d) is cited from a long text used by Ho (1993). The text istwelve and a half pages long in the original transcription with word-to-wordtranslation (pp. 221-233). The alleged theme/topic appears in the middle ofp. 232but the nearest previous mention of shengjing 'the Bible' is in the first line of p.231, i.e. one and a half pages earlier. Therefore, if the topic serves a linkingfunction, it is not a textual one. Since the title of the text is 'Christians' Belief, 'theBible' is derivable from the discourse theme, i.e. the theme of the whole text. But,here, Ho is treating it as an utterance theme, which, according to Ho himself, is twolevels away from the discourse theme.

5. You gejishi haozi is a dialect form for you hao jishi ge 'to have quite a fewtens of them. '

6. This passage is from a story about Zhu Zhishan, a well-known writer-painterin the Ming Dynasty. In this story, he was commissioned by a corrupt and wealthyMagistrate to do a painting and he asked a high price for it.

7. This discourse passage is taken from a spoken text on 'the Legend of theWhite Snake' collected in Ho (1993) for his own research. Some modificationshave been made, such as the omission of some of the so-called hedges. But, noneof them should affect our point of discussion.

8. The topical status can be made clearer at this point by an anticipatorycontrastive stress in speech. Unfortunately, there is no such indication in the originaltext.

9. The choice between a pronoun and a zero is a problem dealt with in Li(1985), Chen (1986) and Xu (1995). We will summarize them in Chapter 8.

10. They represent a composite of marked topics from Li and Thompson(1981), Tsao (1990) and Ho (1993).

11. As a matter off act, more nominals can occur in this position, in which casemore than one topic is recognized in a hierarchical structure. Cf. Chu (1983 :225-8).

12. The reasons for Tsao (1990) to recognize the secondary topic as differentfrom the primary one are syntactic and semantic. But, if he is correct, it shouldlogically follow that it is more natural to continue on a primary topic than on asecondary one.

I. Hockett (personal communication) modestly attributed the use of the termtopic to the joint initiation ofY. R. Chao and himself.

2. This characterization is a composite of some non-technical definitions suchas in Jespersen (1965) and Curme (1947).

104.A Mandarin Chinese Discourse Grammar-What It ShouldBe Like? 9

1.6. A Sketch of the Language ll1.6.1. Phonology ll1.6.2. Morphology 13

1.6.2.1. Inflectional Affixes 131.6.2.2. Derivational Affixes 171.6.2.3. Compounding 20

1.6.3. Syntax 221.6.3.1. Word Order. 231.6.3.2. 'Subject' vs. 'Topic' 241.6.3.3. Special Constructions 27

2.2. Verbal Affixes: Aspect-Marking and Other Functions 372.2.1. The Experiential-Guo and the Inchoative -Qilai 38

2.2.1.1. Experience as a Viewpoint.. .382.2.1.2. Experiential Sentence as State 412.2.1.3. Inchoative as a Viewpoint... .44

2.2.2. The Progressive Zai- and the Durative -Zhe A52.2.2.1. Previous Treatments 452.2.2.2. Problems and Some Solutions 48

2.2.3. Durative -Zhe and Progressive Zai- in Discourse 51

2.2.3.1. Semantic Interpretation of -Zhe and VerbType 53

2.2.3.2. Syntactic Interpretation of -Zhe 542.2.3.3. Pragmatics and -Zhe 572.2.3 A. Summary 60

2.2.4. The Perfective Aspect Marker -Le 612.2.5. The Verbal Suffix -Le in Discourse 65

2.2.5.1. Recent Pragmatic/Discourse Studies of -Le 662.2.5.2. -Le as a Peak Marker 672.2.5.3. -Le as an 'Anteriority' Marker 712.2.504. -Le and Monosyllabic Activity Verb 742.2.5.5. The Non-Occurrence of -Le: Verbs of

Saying and Verbs with a Classical Flavor.. 752.2.5.6. Summary 76

2.2.6. The Multi-Perspective Nature of -Le 77

204. The Discourse Network of Aspect Marking 792.4.1. Summary of Aspectual Functions 79204.2. Application 80

3.1. Modality, Modality Adverbs and Connectives 883.1.1. Modality 883.1.2. Modality Adverbs in Mandarin Chinese 893.1.3. The Connective Nature of Modality Adverbs 913.104. Summary 94

3.2. Modality Adverbs and Their Discourse Function 943.2.1. Jui and Cai 953.2.2. Bing, Dao and Ye 1023.2.3. You, Hai and Zai l07

4.1.1. Interrogation by Ma and by Other Particles 12I4. I .1.1. The Negative Ma-Question 1224.1.1.2. Differences Between Ma-Question and

V-Not- V Question 1224.1.1.3. Other 'Question' Particles-A/Ya, Ba and

Ne 1234.1.2. The Change-of-State Particle Le 1264.1.3. The Presuppositional Particle Me 130

4.2. Modality Functions 1324.2.1. Speaker's Uncertainty: Ba .l32

4.2.1.1. Li and Thompson's 'Soliciting Agreement'Account. 133

4.2.1.2. The 'Speaker's Uncertainty' ProposaL 1344.2.1.3. The Pause Particle Ba 1374.2.1.4. Summary 139

4.2.2. Personal Involvement: A/Ya 1394.2.2. I. Functions Identified by Chao and Dow 1394.2.2.2. Li and Thompson: Reduced Forcefulness 1414.2.2.3. 'Personal Involvement' 142

4.2.3. Insistence: Me 1454.2.3.1. Chappell: Obviousness, Disagreement and

Indignation 1454.2.3.2. From Factuality to Insistence 1474.2.3.3. Summary 151

4.3. Discourse Functions 1534.3.1. End of Discourse: Le 1544.3.2. Inter-Clausal/Sentential Linking: Ne 158

4.3.2.1. Li and Thompson: Response toExpectation 158

4.3.2.2. Alleton: Appeal to Listener's ActiveParticipation 160

4.3.2.3. King: Evaluator of BackgroundInformation 163

4.3.2.4. Ne as a Particle ofInter-Clausal/SententialLinking 166

4.3.2.5. Summary 1754.3.3. Obviousness: Me 176

4.4. Interactions Between Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics .... 1784.4.1. Perfectivity, Change of State and End of Discourse .. 1784.4.2. Presupposition, Insistence and Obviousness .l82

4.5. Variety of Functions of Sentence-Final Particles-ASummary 184

5.1. Given and New Information 1885.1.1. Information Status and Syntactic Correlates 1895.1.2. Between Given vs. New and Definite vs.

Indefinite 1905.1.3. Can Given Information Be Used To Inform?-

Source vs. Management.. 197

5.3. Theme, Topic, Focus and Contrast in InformationStructure 2075.3.1. Theme, Topic, Contrast, and Their Informative

Value 2075.3.2. Focus and Contrast as Means ofInformation

Management. 210

6.1. Grounding, Information, Subordination, and TheirCorrelation 2186.1.1. Background and Foreground 2186.1.2. Information, Grounding and Subordination 220

6.2. The Grounding Status of Subordination in Chinese 2266.2.1. Relative Clauses · 2266.2.2. Subordinate Conjunctions 2316.2.3. Nominalization 2336.2.4. 'Non-Finite' Verb Forms 2356.2.5. Residual Structures · 238

7.1. Topic and Subject-Their Similarities and Differences 2477.1.1. Topic and Subject in Mandarin Chinese 2487. I .2. Towards Defining the Topic 250

7.3. The Formation and Continuation ofa Topic-ThreeStages 26 I7.3.1. The Formation of Unmarked Topics 26 I7.3.2. The Formation of Marked Topics 265

8.3. Major Researchers on Chinese Anaphora 2848.3. I. Li on Anaphora and Discourse Structure 285

8.3.1.1. Syntactic and Semantic Restrictions 2868.3. 1.2. Discourse Needs 288

8.3.2. Chen on Anaphora and Referent Tracking 2928.3.2. I. Continuity and Interference 2928.3.2.2. Negligibility and Discourse Saliency 2948.3.2.3. Minor and Major Breaks 2958.3.204. Noteworthiness and Difficulty for

Identification............................................... 2968.3.2.5. Lexical Incompatibility and Syntactic

Parallelism 2988.3.3. Xu on Anaphora and Its Resolution 298

8.3.3.1. Accessibility Marking 2988.3.3.2. Co-Topic, Expected Topic and Topic

Stack............................................................ 3008.304. Summary 303

804.1. Refinements of the Theories, Non-Topical PA's andSyntactic Requirements: A Sample Case 305

804.2. NA in Non-Topical Position: Syntax andPragmatics 313

804.3. Anaphora and Point of View 316

9. I. The Topic Chain 32 I9. I. I. Topic Chain as a Discourse Unit... 3229.1.2. Topic Chain as a Syntactic Category 3259.1.3. Issues Concerning Topic Chain 327

9. 1.3. I. The First Link 3279. I .3.2. Embedding Within a Topic Chain 3309. I .3.3. Telescopic Chain 3329.1.304. Topic Chain as a Unit in Syntax or

Discourse? 3379. IA. Summary 338

9.2. More About Topic Chain 3389.2. I. Motivations for Topic Chain 3399.2.2. Beyond Topic Chain 351

9.3. Toward Defining the Chinese SENTENCE 3539.3. I. Clause and Textuality 3549.3.2. Coordination and Subordination 3569.3.3. Non-Conventional Backgrounding in Clause-

Combining 3609.3.3. I. Conjunctive Adverbs 36 I9.3.3.2. Verbal Form 3649.3.3.3. Background to Foreground Progression

(BFP) 3669.304. 'Sentence' -Final Particles 368

10.1. Between SENTENCEs 38510.1.1. Lexical Cohesion 38510.1.2. Rhetorical Relations 393

10.2. The Paragraph: Discourse Theme and ParagraphBoundary 40110.2.1. The Discourse Theme 40110.2.2. How Paragraph Boundaries Are Identified 404

10.2.2.1. Semantic Incompatibility .40510.2.2.2. Appearance of 'Controlling' Phrase of

the Same Category .40510.2.2.3. Switch ofViewpoint.. .40710.2.2.4. Appearance of Anaphoric Phrase 40710.2.2.5. Difference in Style of Writing 40810.2.2.6. End-of-Scope Description 40910.2.2.7. Summary 409

INTRODUCTION:BETWEEN GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE

11.1. The Running Theme 41611.2. Grammatical Roads That Lead to Discourse Structure 41811.3. Further Issues and Outlook 419

Researchers in Chinese grammar have long recognized the limitations of theWestern theoretical framework of syntax that has been imposed on the study ofChinese grammar since Ma Jianzhong's Ma Shi Wen Tong toward the end of the19th century. For example, Chao (1968) adopts the notion of 'topic' instead of theWestern 'subject' as one of the immediate constituents of the Chinese sentence.!Since then, topic has become a familiar term to most grammarians in thecharacterization of Chinese and other similar languages in spite of the lack of aprecise definition for it. Through the development of Chinese grammatical study inthe past twenty years or so, 'topic' has been utilized to create further functionalnotions, such as 'topic prominency' (Li and Thompson, 1976), 'topic chain' (Tsao,1979), 'secondary topic' (Tsao, 1990), and many others. Topic structures inChinese are also well recognized and worked on in the G-B theory (Li,1990: 197-200). They all represent a departure from the mainstream Westernlinguistic thought and a new direction for Chinese linguistics.

While the tremendous amount of work done on 'topic' has certainly helpedanswer many structural and functional questions in Chinese grammar, there are a lotmore pr.oblems that can be raised concerning the further understanding andexplanatIOn of the grammar of the language. For instance, are there other functionsfor th.e :erbal suffixes, such as Ie and zhe, than their aspectual marking function?Why ISIt that adverb sets such as you, zai, and hai are interchangeable in isolatedclauses while ~hey are not always interchangeable in larger contexts despite theirnear synonymIty (Chen, 1993)? Why is it that the third-person pronouns ta andtamen tend to occur less frequently in Chinese than their counterparts in manyWest~~ langu~ges? ~ow can a Chinese 'sentence' be given a more precisedefimtlOn than expressmg a complete thought' while English and other Westernlan~uages. seem to have ~ better structural definition for it? Why is it that manynatIve ~hmese grammanans have perceived the Chinese language as having apredommantly liushuiju (literally, 'flowing-water sentence') structure2 asdistinguished fro~ other Western types of sentences? These are, of course, just afew of the questIOns that may be raised within the context of current research inChinese grammar. Attempts have been made to explain such facts but,unfortunately, many of them have only appealed to linguistic bias and conjecturethrough native intuition (Cf. Shen, 1988).

Underlying all those questions, however, there is one fundamental problem with

10.3. Discourse Markers in Spoken Mandarin 41110.3.1. Miracle on Hao, Keshi (Danshi, Buguo) and

Na(me) 41110.3.2. Yang on Na and Wang on Ranhou .413