A Study On The Relationship Between Subject And Topic In Modern Chinese

Subject and Topic are two basic conceptions in Modern linguistics. The research to the relationship between them is an important task and hot topic. After Mr. Ma JianZhong led Western tradition grammar model into China in his famous work scholars are trying to work a way out to analyze the sentence structure of Chinese with Subject and Object, especially the confirmation of the Subject of Chinese sentence. In Indo-European languages, subject has certain formation mark. It can be confirmed by formation character such as person, number, and words' order and so on completely. However, Chinese is a language lack of formation change It is difficult to confirm Subject from grammar angle. Meanwhile, Mr. Zhao YuanRen Led Topic into Chinese grammar. And It make problem about Subject more complicated. By now, Subject and Topic have not clear and certain definition yet.This thesis observes and investigates the definition of Subject and Topic systematically. In the author's point of view, Subject of Chinese is a syntactic definition, a part of syntactic structure. Topic of Chinese is a definition of pragmatics, a part of Information structure. These two have different properties. Subject is a unit of syntax as predicate and object. It can be confirmed in static syntactic analysis. Topic shows certain conversational function and has compositional characters. It has to be confirmed in dynamic circumstances.There are three different kinds of opinions about the relationship of subject and Topic. Some scholars take these two for equal and completely coincided. Some scholars think that Subject coexist with Topic, Topic is a syntactic definition as well. The others thins that Subject and Topic are conceptions which have different properties and coincided sometimes. Taking the Beginning part of Chinese sentences as materials, this thesis commentary these three opinions and researches the relationship of Subject and Topic from their structures and functions, drawsconclusion that Subject and Topic can not be taken as equal, and Topic can not be treated as a syntactic unit. Through careful study to the beginning part of Chinese sentences, the author finds out that there is no regular correspondence between Subject and topic. The coinciding of Subject and Topic relies on the information status of Subject. When Subject is information known, Subject and Topic coincides; When Subjects is information is information unknown, they don't.