earticle

영어

This paper deals with topic of Classical Chinese: function of topic, characteristics of topic makers, topicalization rules, and anaphors originated by topicalization. In Classical Chinese, various topic makers are used to make topics the center of attention or contrastive focus. Some makers such as fu夫, ruo若, ruofu若夫 precede topic. Others such as zhe者, ze則, ye也, ye-zhe也者 follow it. Topics of Classical Chinese are derived by applying part or all of topicalization rules consisting of Movement rule, Copying rule, Contraction rule, and Equi-NP Deletion rule one by one. In Classical Chinese, shi是 and ci此(as subjects), zhi之 and empty categories [e](as objects), yan焉(as PP), qi其(as nominal Det) play the rules of anaphors that are co-referring topics. Ultimately, this paper argues that the topic-comment is very efficient tool for the analysis of discourse of Classical Chinese.