The expression of topic and information structure in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

This dissertation examines the syntactic structures for the expression of topic in Mandarin Chinese and seeks to contribute to the understanding of dangling topic structures with a focus on double subject constructions. Topic is a crucial notion in information structure. Mandarin Chinese makes extensive use of syntactic structures to express topics. The dangling topic, a characteristic type of topic in Mandarin Chinese, has been a much-debated issue. Reductionists have argued against this notion and have treated dangling topics as other types of topics or non-topics. The double subject construction, a special type of construction containing dangling topics, is more controversial because the two initial NPs with a semantic relation of possession have often been regarded as a possessive subject with an omitted marker de. This study first critically reviews different views on dangling topics and provides a series of evidence to show that the reductionist analyses intended to nullify the notion of dangling topic are neither persuasive nor comprehensive. Linguistic tests are then applied to distinguish two initial NPs in a double subject construction from a possessive subject. The comparison of results suggests that these two structures are fundamentally different in terms of constituency, the insertion of elements, and coreferential NP deletion. It is revealed that the first NP in a double subject construction functions as the topic. The findings shed light on the understanding and analysis of dangling topics and double subject constructions and confirm the significance of these notions in Mandarin Chinese.