First published in 1976, Subject and Topic presents research from the 1975 University of California, Santa Barbara symposium that sought to achieve thorough understanding of two important grammatical concepts: subject and topic.

Drawing empirical evidence from diverse language families including Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian, Sino-Tibetan, Australian, Afro-Asiatic, Mayan, Niger-Congo, Finno-Ugric, Altaic, Caucasian, Iroquoian, Yuman, and Uto-Aztecan, the volume addresses questions about how subjects and topics can be characterized independently of specific languages and their structural roles. Additional contributions, written especially for this volume, examine child language, American Sign Language, and Jacaltec structures, broadening the empirical foundation.

The book challenges traditional assumptions: no universal definition exists for identifying subjects or topics across languages. Instead, the studies reveal that languages exhibit varying degrees of subject-prominence and topic-prominence, leading to a proposed typology that represents a significant departure from the formalist linguistics dominant in the 1960s. By prioritizing cross-linguistic data collection over theoretical formalization, this volume established new directions for linguistic research and remains essential reading for students and researchers of linguistics.

About the Author

Charles N. Li is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Barbara, USA. He specializes in evolutionary origin of language; animal communication; and language and brain.

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