SUBJECT AND TOPIC: A NEW TYPOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
page 457--489. Academic Press, London /New York, (1976)Abstract
According to our study, there are four basic types of languages: (i) languages that are subject-prominent (a term introduced by E.L. Keenan); (ii) languages that are topic-prominent; (iii) languages that are both subject-prominent and topic-prominent; (iv) languages that are neither subject-prominent nor topic-prominent. In subject-prominent (Sp) languages, the structure of sentences favors a description in which the grammatical relation subject-predicate plays a major role; in topic-prominent (Tp) languages, the basic structure of sentences favors a description in which the grammatical relation topic-comment plays a major role. In type (iii) languages, there are two equally important distinct sentence constructions, the subject-predicate construction and the topic-comment construction; in type (iv) languages, the subject and the topic have merged and are no longer distinguishable in all sentence types.