Sentence-internal Topics in Mandarin Chinese: The Case of Object Preposing

This paper provides substantial evidence for analysing the preposed object as an internal topic. The dominant misconception of the preposed object as an instance of focalization, mainly due to a false parallel with the lian…ye/dou 'even' construction, is invalidated, both on syntactic and semantic grounds. The preposed object is shown not to be adjoined to vP, but to occupy the specifier position of a functional projection FP below the subject and above vP. Like the external topic in the sentence-initial position, the internal topic can be derived in either of two ways, by movement or by base-generation. In contrast to the external topic position (where, e.g., conditional and causal clauses are base-generated), no clauses are admitted in the internal topic position. Likewise, multiple topics are only possible in the external topic position and excluded from the internal topic position.