First published in 1976, Subject and Topic presents research from the 1975 University of California, Santa Barbara symposium that sought to achieve thorough understanding of two important grammatical concepts: subject and topic.
First published in 1976, Subject and Topic presents research from the 1975 University of California, Santa Barbara symposium that sought to achieve thorough understanding of two important grammatical concepts: subject and topic.
Drawing empirical evidence from diverse language families including Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian, Sino-Tibetan, Australian, Afro-Asiatic, Mayan, Niger-Congo, Finno-Ugric, Altaic, Caucasian, Iroquoian, Yuman, and Uto-Aztecan, the volume addresses questions about how subjects and topics can be characterized independently of specific languages and their structural roles. Additional contributions, written especially for this volume, examine child language, American Sign Language, and Jacaltec structures, broadening the empirical foundation.
The book challenges traditional assumptions: no universal definition exists for identifying subjects or topics across languages. Instead, the studies reveal that languages exhibit varying degrees of subject-prominence and topic-prominence, leading to a proposed typology that represents a significant departure from the formalist linguistics dominant in the 1960s. By prioritizing cross-linguistic data collection over theoretical formalization, this volume established new directions for linguistic research and remains essential reading for students and researchers of linguistics.
Arvustused
Charles N. Li is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Barbara, USA. He specializes in evolutionary origin of language; animal communication; and language and brain.
Preface
1. On the notion of subject in ergative languages
2. Givenness,
contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view
3. On the
subject of two passives in Indonesian
4. Properties of basic and derived
subjects in Jacaltec
5. The manifestation of subject, object, and topic in
American sign language
6. Topic, Pronoun, and Grammatical Agreement
7.
Imbedded topic in French
8. Relativization and topicalization in Hittite
9.
Remarkable subjects in Malagasy
10. Towards a universal definition of
Subject
11. Topic as a discourse notion: a study of topic in the
conversations of children and adults
12. On the subjectless Pseudo-Passive
in standard Dutch and the semantics of background agents
13. Subject, theme,
and the speakers empathya reexamination of relativization phenomena
14.
From topic to subject in Indo-European
15. Subject and topic: a new typology
of language
16. The subject in Philippine languages: topic, actor,
actor-topic, or none of the above
17. On the universality of subjects: the
Ilocano case
18. Subject Properties in the North Russian Passive
Charles N. Li is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Barbara, USA. He specializes in evolutionary origin of language; animal communication; and language and brain.
