摘要
本文讨论与汉语主题有关的几个问题。出发点是主题的定义应该包括句法结构、语义和语用几方面的要求，以利于解决许多长期争论不休的问题，如泛指名词作主题，时间地点名词词组充当主题等。接下来讨论的问题是所谓的“汉语式主题”，即与述语没有结构关系的主题。在按类别逐个讨论之后，本文的结论是这些主题其实都跟述语中某个位置相关，并无特别之处。本文还讨论了文献中提到过的主题功能，得出的结论是主题并没有本身特有的句法功能，唯一的例外是在主题链中控制相关名词的删除或代词化。主题链的形成。
he topic comment construction is found in many languages and has attracted much research interest among Chinese linguists ever since Chao (1968) borrows this concept from semantics and discourse analysis to analyze Chinese sentences. This paper is an attempt to summarize the important findings in the study of Chinese topics and to tackle some of the longstanding problems associated with them. The first section is a discussion of previous literature on the definition of topics in Chinese. It is pointed out that it is not sufficient to simply list all the properties of Chinese topics and to use the properties as definition to judge whether an item is a topic. The definition established in this section incorporates insights from previous studies and is based on the structural position of the topic, its semantic relationship with the comment and its discourse functions. The definiteness requirement on topics now comes as a consequence of the new definition and needs not to be stipulated and the difficulties surrounding generic topics can be bypassed. It also provides the basis to differentiate temporal or locative noun phrases that can function as topics and those that cannot.The socalled 'Chinese style topics' are investigated in the second section. It has often been claimed that certain topics in Chinese are not related to any position inside the comment and numerous examples have been cited to support the Chinese style topic claim. These examples are grouped into six types. They are (1) those associated with connective adverbs like the xingkui 'fortunately' as in Neisuo fangzi xingkui qunian mei xia xue , (2) those that are similar to double nominative constructions but have a Whword in front of the adverb dou, as in Tamen shei dou bu lai , (3) those that have an idiom chunk as the predicate such as in Tamen ni kan wo, wo kan ni, (4) those that have a nominal predicate as in Nazhong douzi yijin sanshikuai qian, (5) those that have a nominal adverbial phrase as in Zhejian shi ni bu neng guang mafan yige ren and (6) those that has a special locative noun phrase as the adverbial as in Wujia Niuyue zui gui. After the six types are examined one by one, the conclusion is that there is no such thing as a topic not related to the predicate of the comment. The syntactic functions of Chinese topics are discussed in section three. It has been claimed that topic can be relativized or that topic is the only item in a sentence that can be relativized. After the evidence is weighted carefully, it is determined that there is no evidence that topics in Chinese are related to relativization. Another claim is that a Chinese topic can function as the item being compared. It is argued in this section that comparison in Chinese involves items in their nonderived positions and whether an item in the topic position can be compared is determined by the original position of the item. A topic does not have independent functions in syntax except for the deletion of identical topics. The concepts of topic chain and topic chain formation in Chinese are discussed in section four. It is pointed out that if the topic chain can be considered a syntactic unit, many of its properties can be explained straightforwardly.
出处
《现代外语》
CSSCI
北大核心
1998年第2期43+42+44-59,共18页
Modern Foreign Languages
关键词
主题的定义
汉语式主题
主题的功能
主题链
topic and its definition, Chinese style topics, functions of topic, topic chains
