Topic (linguistics)

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Topic (linguistics)

In linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, the topic (or theme) is the part of the content

Proposition

This article is about the term proposition in logic and philosophy; for other uses see PropositionIn logic and philosophy, proposition refers to either the "content" or Meaning of a meaningful declarative sentence or the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence....
of a predicated

Predicate (grammar)

In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence . In current semantics, a predicate is an expression that can be true of something....
sentence

Sentence (linguistics)

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 in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
. Once stated, the topic is therefore "old news", i.e. it has already been mentioned and understood. For example, the topic is emphasised in italics in the following sentences:

A distinction must be made between the sentence-level topic and the discourse-level topic. Suppose we are talking about Mike's house:

(6) Mike's house was so comfortable and warm! He really didn't want to leave, but he couldn't afford the rent, you know.

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In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, the topic (or theme) is the part of the content
Proposition

This article is about the term proposition in logic and philosophy; for other uses see PropositionIn logic and philosophy, proposition refers to either the "content" or Meaning of a meaningful declarative sentence or the pattern of symbols, marks, or sounds that make up a meaningful declarative sentence....
of a predicated
Predicate (grammar)

In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence . In current semantics, a predicate is an expression that can be true of something....
sentence
Sentence (linguistics)

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 in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
. Once stated, the topic is therefore "old news", i.e. it has already been mentioned and understood. For example, the topic is emphasised in italics in the following sentences:

The dog bit the little girl.
The little girl was bitten by the dog.
As for the little girl, the dog bit her.
The little girl, the dog bit her.

A distinction must be made between the sentence-level topic and the discourse-level topic. Suppose we are talking about Mike's house:

(6) 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 language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s, like English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, resort to different means in order to signal a new topic, such as:

Stating it explicitly as the subject as in (1) (which tends to be considered more topic-like by the speakers).
Using passive voice to transform an object
Object (grammar)

An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence Predicate . It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb....
into a subject as in (2) (for the above reason).
Through periphrastic
Periphrasis

In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammar category or relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation ....
constructions like "As for...", "Speaking of...", etc, as in (3).
Using topic fronting/topicalization, i. e. moving the topic to the beginning of the sentence as in (4) or using left dislocation
Dislocation (syntax)

Not to be confused with appositivesIn syntax, dislocation is a sentence structure in which a Constituent which could otherwise be either an argument or an Adjunct of the clause occurs outside the clause boundaries either to its left or to its right as in English They went to the store, Mary and Peter....
as in (5). (The difference between the two is that in the latter case there is a resumptive pronoun, her in (5).)

There are some other languages, like Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
or Korean
Korean language

Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China....
, that work directly on a topic-comment
Topic-prominent language

A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax so that Sentence s have a topic-comment structure, in which the topic is the thing being talked about and the comment is what is said about the topic....
frame. A new topic is always introduced in a specific way, like with a topic marker
Topic marker

A topic marker is a grammatical particle found in the Japanese language and Korean language languages used to mark the Topic of a sentence. This often overlaps with the Subject of the sentence, causing confusion with learners, as most other languages lack it....
(Japanese and Korean use the suffix
Suffix

In grammar, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the grammatical conjugation of verbs....
es wa
Topic marker

A topic marker is a grammatical particle found in the Japanese language and Korean language languages used to mark the Topic of a sentence. This often overlaps with the Subject of the sentence, causing confusion with learners, as most other languages lack it....
and neun/eun
Topic marker

A topic marker is a grammatical particle found in the Japanese language and Korean language languages used to mark the Topic of a sentence. This often overlaps with the Subject of the sentence, causing confusion with learners, as most other languages lack it....
, respectively). 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
Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun with or without a Determiner , such as Wiktionary:you and Wiktionary:they in English language....
. Pro-drop language
Pro-drop language

A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatics inference . The phenomenon of "pronoun-dropping" is also commonly referred to in linguistics as zero or null anaphora ....
s like Japanese tend simply to delete the old topic, which is then left implicit throughout the discourse until a new one appears.

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

Topic marker
Topic marker

A topic marker is a grammatical particle found in the Japanese language and Korean language languages used to mark the Topic of a sentence. This often overlaps with the Subject of the sentence, causing confusion with learners, as most other languages lack it....
Topic-comment
Topic-comment

In linguistics, the topic is informally what is being talked about, and the comment is what is being said about the Topic . Although this general nature of topic-comment dichotomy is generally accepted, anything beyond that is a matter of great controversy....
Long-distance dependencies