汉语的无标记非主语话题

Unmarked Non-subject Topics in Chinese

汉语是一种"话题突出型语言"的观点现在几乎已成定论。尽管有语料库研究证明,所谓"汉语式话题"句占全体句子的比例极小,汉语不应被认定为话题突出型语言,但这种观点未被广泛接受。本文作者将"汉语式话题"界定为无标记的非主语话题,发现这种话题可以由主语的领属限定语、附语、宾语(包括宾语的中心语)、主语补语转化而来。对于主语的领属限定语和附语来说,话题化的路径是省略(包括属格标记、介词和话题标记的省略);对于宾语或宾语的中心语和主语补语来说,话题化的路径主要是移位。真正算得上汉语式话题的仅有主语的不带属格标记的领属限定语和不带话题标记的话题附语这两种。由于汉语的绝大多数无标记非主语话题可以在英语里找到在位置、功能和形式上与之对应的成分,汉语不应被认定为话题突出型语言。

It has been generally accepted that Chinese is a ＂topic-prominent language＂. Although a corpus-based study has shown that sentences with so-called Chinese style topics account for only a tiny fraction of all the sentences in the corpus, and that Chinese should not be considered a topic-prominent language ,this view has not won wide support. This article defines a ＂Chinese style topic＂ as an unmarked non-subject topic and finds that such topics can be derived through transformation from the genitive determiner of the subject, an adjunct, the object （ including the head of the object） or the subject complement. For the genitive determiner of the subject and an adjunct,the pathway of topicalization is ellipsis（ including the ellipsis of the genitive mark- er,preposition and the topic marker） ;for the object or the head of the object and the subject complement, the pathway is mainly movement. The only authentic Chinese style topics are the genitive determiner of the subject without the genitive marker and the topic adjunct without a topic marker. Since most of the unmarked non-subject topics in Chinese can find their counterparts in English in their position, function and form, this article concludes that Chinese should not be regarded as a topic-prominent language.