A Constrastive Study Of Chinese And Japanese Topic Constructions

Language is the most important tool for human communication. People may discuss one certain topic in all kinds of languages. Functionalists Charles Li and S. Thompson(1976) argue that both Chinese and Japanese are topic prominent languages. Chinese is topic prominent, but both topic and subject are important for Japanese. The two languages have different representations in topic prominence.The thesis investigates the differences between Chinese and Japanese topic constructions, mainly considering topic marker, types of topic constructions and topicalization.The first chapter shows the research reason, research status of the topic, the purpose of the paper and the proposed theory and methods.and analyzes the characteristics of the topic in Chinese, as well as the relation and the difference between the topic and the subject. The second chapter analyzes the characteristics of the topic in Japanese, and it’s the relation and the difference. The third chapter compares the different form of the topics between Chinese and Japanese. The forth chapter analyzes the different manifestations of topicalization in Chinese and Japanese. The fifth chapter summarizes the results of this paper, and points out the shortcomings, and put forward the research direction in the future.