Re: Topic-comment sentences in Mandarin

On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> AFAIK, we concluded that thread with the consensus that this sentence
> probably has elided a couple o' "de"'s. However, I'm not sure if this
> explanation is necessarily that strong, because I've come across sentences
> that are analogous in construction, but has no reason to drop the "de",
> eg.:
> 1)      che4 wan1 tang1 wei4dao4 hen3 shiang1
>         this bowl soup  flavor   very aromatic
>         "This bowl of soup has an aromatic flavor"
> 2)      ta~1 er2zhi3 ge4zhi3 hen3 gao1
>         his  son     stature very tall
>         "his son is very tall" (or, "his son has a tall stature")
> 3)      ta~1 du4zhi3 hen3 fei2
>         his  belly   very fat
>         "he has a large belly" (ie., "he's very fat")
>
> Now the monkey wrench for whatever other explanations you may have had:
> 4)      na4  ny3hair2 tou2fa3 you4 chang2 ge4zhi1 you4 gao1
>         that girl     hair    also long   stature also tall
>         "that girl both has long hair and is tall"
>         (hard to capture the meaning in the Mandarin -- the you4 marks
>         correlatives, similar to the Greek me'n...de construction)
>
> The only plausible explanation I can think of is a topic-comment
> construction. But not being a linguist, I could be wrong, of course.
> Comments?
These are referred to as "free topics" and are found in a wide variety of
languages, including Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Gunwinjguan languages (in
Australia).

Japanese first:

Yama ga ki ga kirei desu.
mountain NOM tree NOM pretty be.
'As for the mountains, the trees are pretty.'

Here is an example from Mayali.

Maih na-wu gunj na-wu bonj andi-wo gunj andud.
animal I-DEM kangeroo I-DEM OK 2pS/1sO-give kangaroo then.
'Right, that animal, that kangaroo, give it to me!'

IIRC, the topic must be general, and the argument of the verb must be a
more specific.  Note for examploe, that "mountain" is the general
location and "tree" is the more specific thing that is pretty in the
Japanese examples. In the Mayali example, "animal" is more general, and
"kangaroo" is more specific. I would predict, then, that you could not
reverse the nouns in the Chinese examples above and still have a
grammatical sentence.

Marcus