話題突出和其在教學方面的意義

Topic Prominence and Its Pedagogical Implications

本論文的主要觀點是，有些漢語結構表面上不怎麼相關，實際上卻統一於話題突出之下。同時，漢英兩種語言在這些結構是否合乎語法方面表現出的差異，至少可以部分歸因於漢語是話題突出型語言而英語不是這一事實。漢語的話題突出對於中文教學來說，至少在下列三個方面有著重要意義：（一）教師有必要儘早向學生介紹“話題－述題”結構；（二）教材有必要系統地介紹“話題”、“話題－述題”和“話題突出”這些概念；（三）在考察學生漢語水準時，需要把話題突出的特徵考慮進去。

This paper shows that although some Chinese constructions may look disparate from each other at first glance, they are actually united by the fact that Chinese is a topic-prominent language. It argues that the fact that Chinese is a topic-prominent language and English is not is an important factor that contributes to the contrast in grammaticality between the Chinese constructions and their English counterparts. The importance of topic prominence in Chinese has at least three pedagogical implications. That is, in the teaching and learning of Chinese, it is important (i) to explain to students the topic-comment structure at the earliest appropriate point, (ii) to mention and systematically discuss the notions of “topic,” “topic-comment,” and “topic prominence” in the textbook, and (iii) to take into consideration the topic-prominent features when assessing students' proficiency in Chinese.