香港手语的话题句

Topic constructions in Hong Kong Sign Language

本文探讨香港手语的"关涉"话题及"场景布置"话题前置现象。"关涉"话题点出句子关于什么,可以是"吊挂式"、主语或宾语。如果"关涉"话题为宾语,可以移位至句首或维持原处;如为代名词,可以右移位至句末。"关涉"话题没有特定的表情,并且多数以限定符或代名词固定在空间的坐标上。"场景布置"话题为句子的述谓所定出的时空等框架,通常出现在句首,以扬眉为标记。它们一般是名词词组或短句,不能右移位至句末。

This paper investigates topics such as 'aboutness' topics,'scene-setting' topics and fronting of grammatical objects in Hong Kong Sign Language.An 'aboutness' topic represents what the sentence is about.It can be realized as a hanging topic,a grammatical subject,or an object.When it coincides with the grammatical object it may be fronted to the sentence-initial position or remain in-situ.An aboutness topic in pronominal form can be right-dislocated to the sentence-final position.Aboutness topics are not consistently marked by any non-manual features,but are overwhelmingly spatially anchored.A scene-setting topic creates a temporal,locative,or individual framework in which the predication of the sentence holds.They are usually found in sentence-initial position,and are marked with brow raise.They are usually realized as full NPs or clauses and cannot be right-dislocated.