'Topic — Comment or Modifier — Modified? Information Structure in Modern Standard Chinese

In this paper we first summarise how linguists have treated the notions of topic and comment in the context of Chinese sentence structure. We then review how a number of Chinese scholars have analysed sentence structure in Chinese. We then propose that certain sentences in MSC traditionally analysed as following a topic — comment sequence, particularly those with sentence initial adverbial clauses are, in fact, exhibiting the principle of modifier — modified sequence rather than the topic — comment sequence.