In linguistics, the topic (or theme) is the part of the proposition that is being talked about (predicated). Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields In traditional Grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies Once stated, the topic is therefore "old news", i. e. the things already mentioned and understood. For example, the topic is emphasized in italics in the following sentences:
- The dog bit the little girl. In Linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it often preceded and followed
- The little girl was bitten by the dog.
- The little girl, the dog bit her.
The topic is also called theme, and the predicate that gives information on the topic is also called rheme.
A distinction must be made between the sentence-level topic and the discourse-level topic. Suppose we are talking about Mike's house:
- Mike's house was so comfortable and warm! He really didn't want to leave, but he couldn't afford the rent, you know. And it had such a nice garden in the back!
In the example, the discourse-level topic is established in the first sentence: it is Mike's house. In the following sentence, a new "local" topic is established on the sentence level: he (Mike). But the discourse-level topic is still Mike's house, which is why the last comment does not seem out of place.
Many languages, like English, resort to different means in order to signal a new topic, such as:
- Stating it explicitly as the subject (which tends to be considered more topic-like by the speakers). A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States
- Using passive voice to transform an object into a subject (for the above reason). In Grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state that the verb expresses and the participants identified An object in Grammar is a Sentence element and part of the sentence predicate.
- Through periphrastic constructions like "As for. In Linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or relationship is expressed by a Free morpheme (typically one or more Function . . ", "Speaking of. . . ", etc.
- Using left dislocation (called topic fronting or topicalization, i. In Syntax, dislocation is a sentence structure in which a constituent which could otherwise be either an argument or an adjunct of the clause occurs e. moving the topic to the beginning of the sentence).
There are some other languages, like Japanese or Korean, that work directly on a topic-comment frame. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its Syntax so that sentences have a topic–comment (or theme–rheme structure in which the A new topic is always introduced in a specific way, like with a topic marker (Japanese uses a suffix, wa). A topic marker is a Grammatical particle found in the Japanese and Korean languages used to mark the topic of a sentence In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word A topic marker is a Grammatical particle found in the Japanese and Korean languages used to mark the topic of a sentence The topic can be the subject or the object of a verb, but it can also be an indirect object or even an oblique complement of any kind. It is always dislocated to the front of the sentence.
Signaling the topic as such serves the pragmatic function of avoiding repetition. In many languages, old topics are replaced with a pronoun. In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or Pro-drop languages like Japanese tend simply to delete the old topic, which is then left implicit throughout the discourse until a new one appears. A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping" is a Language in which certain classes of Pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically
Bibliography
- Givón, Talmy. 1983a. Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Li, Charles N. /Sandra A. Thompson (1976): "Subject and Topic: A New Typology of Languages", in: Li, Charles N. (ed. ) Subject and Topic, New York/San Francisco/London: Academic Press, 457-490.
See also
External links
- Topicalization In Moundsbar: a humorous look at a ficitonal example of extreme topicalization. A topic marker is a Grammatical particle found in the Japanese and Korean languages used to mark the topic of a sentence In Linguistics, the topic (or theme) is informally what is being talked about and the comment ( rheme or focus) is what is being Long-distance dependency is an alternative term for Wh-movement, primarily used in approaches to Syntax which do not use movement rules
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