Title: A Reanalysis of the Syntactic Realization of the Chinese Dangling Topics from the Perspective of Chinese-English Comparison

Abstract: There are generally three types of topics: Topicalization Topic Construction, Left Dislocation Topic Construction and Chinese-style Topic Construction (also called Dangling Topic). Dangling Topics could be further divided into true and fake dangling topics according to Chomsky’s hypothesis that the argument structure is determined by External Merger. This study holds that functional category projection and relativization can help distinguish the true and fake dangling topics. The true dangling topic is base-generated and cannot be relativized, while fake dangling topic is shift-generated and can be relativized.

Keywords: Chinese-English comparison, dangling topic, syntactic realization, functional category projection, relativization

Author: Yu Shi, Associate Professor, College of Foreign Languages, Shaoyang University, Shaoyang, Hunan, China