从汉语的焦点与话题看英语中的YMovement及其他倒装句

Y Movement and Other Inverted Structures in English: Form the Perspective of Mandarin Topic and Focus

英语中有一个比较特别的倒装结构，语言学者称之谓Ｙｍｏｖｅｍｅｎｔ，其形式如下：Ａ ｍａｎ ａｎｄ ａｗｏｍａｎ ｃａｍｅｉｎ．Ｔｈｅｙｌｏｏｋｅｄ ａ ｂｉｔ ｄｉｓｏｒｉｅｎｔｅｄ ． Ｗｅｔａｌｋｅｄ ｔｏ ｔｈｅ ｗｏｍａｎ ｆｉｒｓｔ． Ｔｈｅ ｍａｎ ｗｅｉｇｎｏｒｅｄ．（Ｇｉｖóｎ，１９９３ ，Ｖｏｌ．Ⅱ：１８３） 语法书通常认为其中提前的宾语是一般的“话题”，或者认为是“焦点话题”。这两种提法都是片面的。其实，Ｙｍｏｖｅｍｅｎｔ 结构中提前的那个名词组，有时候是“对比话题”，有时候则是用来重新引进一个先前已经提到的“人、事、物”，以便充作话题，这里称之为“重引话题”。本文将以汉语中相对应的结构，从“焦点”与“话题”的观点，来比较其异同，以说明这个结构及英语其他倒装句的正确意义及功能。

An English inverted structure known as Y movement has been the discussion of linguistics for some time. It takes the following form: A man and a woman came in. They looked a bit disoriented. We talked to the woman first. The man, we ignored. (Givón,1993,Vol.Ⅱ:183) Grammars generally treat the man in the above example simply as a topic or as a focussed topic. Both treatments are partial. Actually, the preposed nominal sometimes serves as a contrastive topic and other times as a device to reintroduce a referent that has been mentioned previously. It can thus be termed a reintroduced topic. The present paper will compare it with corresponding structures in Mandarin Chinese from the viewpoint of focus and topic. In addition, other similar inverted structures in English will be interpreted from the same perspective.