Representing Topic-Comment Structures in Chinese

Representing Topic-Comment Structures in Chinese Haihua PAN Dept. of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics City University of Hong Kong Kowloon, Hong Kong cthpan@cityu.edu.hk Jianhua HU Dept. of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics City University of Hong Kong Kowloon, Hong Kong ctjhu@cityu.edu.hk Abstract Shi (2000) claims that topics must be related to a syntactic position in the comment, thus denying the existence of dangling topics in Chinese. Under Shi's analysis, the dangling topic sentences in Chinese are not topic-comment but subject-predicate sentences. However, Shi's arguments are not without problems. In this paper we argue that topics in Chinese can be licensed not only by a syntactic gap but also by a semantic gap/variable without syntactic realization. Under our analysis, all the dangling topics discussed in Shi (2000) are, in fact, not subjects but topics licensed by a semantic gap/variable that can turn the relevant comment into an open predicate, thus licensing- dangling topics and deriving well-formed topic-comment constructions. Our analysis fares better than Shi's in not only unifying the licensing mechanism of a topic to an open predicate without considering how the open predicate is derived, but also unifying the treatment of normal and dangling topics in Chinese. 1� Introduction Shi (2000) claims that topic-comment constructions are derived from basic sentence structures via syntactic operations, and a topic must be related to a syntactic position inside the comment which can be filled either by an empty category or a resumptive pronoun, thus denying the existence of dangling topics in Chinese. In this paper we will argue that topics in Chinese can be licensed not only by a syntactic gap or resumptive pronoun, but also by a semantic variable which does not have a corresponding syntactic position. We first show that a topic in Chinese need not be related to a syntactic position in the comment, and then show that, besides being syntactically licensed, a topic in Chinese can also be semantically licensed. In this case, it is licensed by a semantic variable which does not have any syntactic realization, and this semantic variable can turn the relevant comment clause into a semantic open predicate, thus deriving a well-formed topic-comment construction. Under our analysis, the dangling topics discussed in Shi (2000) are just topics licensed by a semantic open predicate, though not by a syntactic one. 2� Dangling Topics In English topics are derived via syntactic operation, and are thus licensed syntactically by a syntactic gap or a resumptive pronoun. Shi argues that the Chinese topics should be derived the same way, thus denying the existence of dangling topics, which are not syntactically related to any syntactic gap inside the comment. Shi discusses six types of dangling topics in Chinese, and he claims that, upon closer investigation, they are not dangling topics but subjects, since a structural relationship does exist between 382 the so-called dangling topics and their comment. The first type of dangling topics discussed in Shi (2000) is given below: (1) a. Tamen, wo kan ni, ni kan wo. they I look …

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