Topic and Its Negation in Chinese Sentences

Abstract

There are two major views on the generation of sentential topics in Chinese, of which some are the ones moved from a syntactic position. Disagreement occurs as regards the so-called dangling topics. One view contends that dangling topics are the moved ones, thematically related to a position inside the comment, the other holds that they are base-generated and licensed by the non-empty set resulting from the intersection of the topic set and the set generated by the semantic variable in the comment. Both views help interpret the negation of topics in Chinese sentential negation from the perspective of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. It is suggested that the topic can be negated when the variable or related element in the comment has a co-referential relation with the topic, or has no definite referent.