Kibbitzer 25 | Topic Prominence |
Original | Revision |
---|---|
More contemporary psychological approaches such as information processing, in contrast to Piaget's general-purpose functioning of mind, they have argued that mind is genetically structured into special-purpose "modules", ... | In contrast with Piaget's view of the general- purpose functioning of mind, contemporary psychologists using models based on information processing have argued that mind is genetically structured into special-purpose "modules", ... |
Writers such as Charles Li 1 have pointed to a general difference between 'subject-prominent' languages such as English, and 'topic-prominent' languages such as Chinese. With a subject-prominent language the primary responsibility of the speaker or writer is to name the subject of the verb. With a 'topic-prominent' language the primary responsibility is to name the Topic of the sentence (ie what it is about), with the possibillity that the subject may be be named separately:
Zheige shu | yezi | hen da |
This tree | leaf | very large |
TOPIC | SUBJECT |
ie in (subject-prominent) English 'This tree has very large leaves' or ' The leaves of this tree are very large.'
This general typological difference between the two languages often underlies the problems that Chinese-speakers have in writing English, as in the present example, where the writer has attempted to name both a Topic ('More contemporary psychological approaches') and a Subject ('they'). The proposed revision focuses on the Subject-verb relationship, and in recasting the sentence replaces the abstract 'approaches' by the human 'psychologists' as a more appropriate suhject of 'argue'. A subsequent concordance shows a limited range of abstract nouns being used as the subject of 'argue', 'approach' not being one of them.
1 : that strategic planning, efficiency, and economies of scale argued for big authorities, whil 2 on Easter Island. The evidence of physical anthropology also argues against a westward migrat 3 ad to evolve. Others believe the evidence from homeobox genes argues otherwise: so similar are 4 nvention is brought into force, say the authors. The strategy argues that advances in biotechn 5 oirs of infection still survive in Eastern Europe. One theory argues that the Black Death in E 6 ce for the infection theory of childhood leukaema. The theory argues that when populations are 7 l can experience pain and distress. Evolutionary theory, too, argues the kinship of the specie
1Li , Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson 'Subject and Topic: A New Typology pf Language' in C.N. Li (ed.) Subject and Tpic (New York: Academic Press, 1976).
9th August 1997 | Consultant: Tim Johns |
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