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A Comparative Study of "Topic-comment" Structures in English and Chinese

Author: NanHongHong
Tutor: CaoJin
School: Northwest Normal University
Course: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Keywords: topic comment “topic-comment”structure (TC) the syntactic mechanism of TC function pattern distribution
CLC: H146
Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2011
Downloads: 31
Quote: 0
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Abstract


When a person utters a sentence, he or she tends to“announce”a topic first, then“make comment”on it, thus,“topic-comment”as a relatively loose structure is universal in human languages. Mastering a specific language, simply put, is knowing how to express a certain meaning with a sentence or a group of sentences, in this process, choosing a topic is the primary task, and also the progression of topic in a certain discourse is critical for the formation of the discourse. So, the study on“topic-comment”structure is of great theoretical and practical significance.In the circle of international grammar study, the“topic-comment”phenomenon had long been neglected because of the dominance of the formalism thinking in grammar study. It was not until the 20th century that Chinese made a name for itself, and then the“topic-comment”phenomenon got attention gradually. The American linguist Hockett (1958) was the first to introduce the notion“topic”and“comment”into Chinese. Chao Yuanren (1968) made a systematic study of“topic-comment”structure in Chinese. Then, the issue of“topic-comment”structure became a hated problem in linguistics, Charles N. Li and Sandra A. Thompson (1976) even set up a typological standard according to whether a language is topic-prominent or not. Since then, however, the study of“topic-comment”structure was trapped in endless debates, and the theoretical value of it was weakened.“Topic-comment”structure is a hot issue in linguistics, almost all of the famous linguists and grammarians have a discussion on it; however, there is a lack of the systematic study of it. The existing researches are scattered in various grammar works and some academic dissertations.Thus, the purposes of this study are the following: 1). The existing researches are summarized and analyzed thoroughly; the important theories are listed; some arguments which are far from the truth or un-mature are corrected, and also, some viewpoints which are of great value are highlighted; the reasoning behind the main debates related to“topic-comment”structure is explored; eventually, the value of“topic-comment”structure in explaining the specific language phenomena is strengthened. 2). Based on 1), the nature of“topic-comment”structure is discussed, and the classification is conducted. 3). Based on 2), the function patterns and the distributions of“topic-comment”structure in English and Chinese are investigated and analyzed, which is helpful for understanding the languages deeply and learning them conveniently.Two kinds of data are adopted in this thesis: casually collected and systematically collected. The casually collected data are from daily life, and systematically collected data are 20 English and Chinese classics which deliberately include long short stories, short stories, essays and proses. The research methods adopted in this study mainly are literature analysis, contrastive analysis, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis and content analysis etc.There are six chapters in this thesis. Chapter 1 introduces the purposes and rationale. Chapter 2 explains the research methods and research procedures. Chapter 3 gives a detailed review of the history of the TC theory and the researches on TC. Chapter 4 re-examines the nature of TC, and also TCs are classified from different dimensions. The syntactic mechanism of TC is proposed and discussed. Chapter 5 makes a survey of the function pattern and the distribution of TC in English and Chinese. Chapter 6 is the general conclusion and implications aroused from the present study.

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