Tang Zhengda (CASS IL, Peking)

Topicalization as a prominent device in Chinese: With reference to relativization and complementation

Időpont: 2013. december 12, 11:00

This study concerns a syntactic device of topicalization robust in Chinese language which results in a generation of series of cross-category constructions.  It is so prominent that different categories or constructions behave more and more like the binary topic-comment structures, bearing the same topicalizers and intonations and observing similar constraints which share with canonic topics. This study is within the framework of functional and typological grammar, with a reference to a less acknowledged Greenbergian theory of 'Language Internal Iconicity'.