人物专栏 | Linda Badan教授访谈

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《理论语言学五道口站》(2020年第44期，总108期)“人物专栏”与大家分享本站采编人员訾姝瑶对Linda Badan教授进行采访的访谈录。Linda Badan教授，帕多瓦大学语言学博士，香港城市大学、莱顿大学、阿姆斯特丹大学博士后，现任职于根特大学，主要研究方向包括句法语义接口、句法韵律学接口以及比较语言学，曾获法国社会科学高等研究院、巴黎高等师范学校以及根特大学等机构的多个学术奖项。

本次访谈中，Linda Badan教授分享了她在学习汉语中遇到的难题，并为我们提供了一些学习和研究汉语的建议，如句末语气词的习得问题，她认为语言学对于学习汉语至关重要，并就发掘个人研究兴趣的问题分享了自己的看法。此外，Linda Badan教授还向我们介绍了如何区分话题和主语两个概念，并阐述了话题和焦点所能够存在的“高缘”和“低缘”范围。

人物简介

Linda Badan教授

Linda Badan教授，博士毕业于帕多瓦大学，现任职于根特大学英语系，其研究领域为理论语言学，尤其关注句法语义接口、句法韵律学接口、以及比较语言学等相关研究。Badan教授曾获得多所大学的博士后交流资格，如她在香港城市大学做了汉语和意大利语的信息结构研究，在莱顿大学语言学中心以及阿姆斯特丹大学做了汉语和克瓦语动词结构的对比句法研究，在根特大学做了意大利语语篇标记词的句法研究。此外，Badan教授所负责的研究项目曾多次获奖，她所做的句法韵律接口层面的感叹结构研究在法国社会科学高等研究院东亚语言研究所举办的蒋经国国际学术交流会上获奖；所负责的汉语双及物结构研究获得了巴黎高等师范学院的奖学金资助（the International Fellowship for Experienced Researches Fernand Braudel IFER）。Badan教授近期关注于二语习得及遗产语言的研究，在此方面，她所负责的意大利第二语言及遗产语言的语篇标记词研究被根特大学授予Startkrediet BOF奖。

Brief Introduction

Prof. Linda Badan obtained her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Padua and she is currently a professor of the Department of English at Ghent University. She has done research in theoretical linguistics (particularly the syntax-semantics interface, the syntax-prosody interface, and comparative syntax). She has obtained a number of postdoctoral fellowships at different universities, overarching different fields and topics in linguistics, such as information structure in Chinese and Italian (at City University of Hong Kong), comparative syntax in verb constructions in Chinese and Kwa languages (Leiden University Center for Linguistics & Amsterdam University), and the syntax of discourse markers in Italian (Ghent University). Prof. Linda Badan has also obtained an award with a project on exclamative constructions at the syntax-prosody interface by the Chiang Ching-kuo for International Scholarly Exchange host by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales-CNRS-CRLAO in Paris. She has also been awarded the International Fellowship for Experienced Researches Fernand Braudel IFER at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris with a project on ditransitive constructions in Chinese. More recently, she became interested in second language acquisition and heritage language. On this topic, she has been awarded the Startkrediet BOF grant by Ghent university with a project on discourse markers in Italian L2 and heritage language.

访谈内容

01.

訾姝瑶：我知道您学习过汉语，并且汉语学得很好。对于那些以汉语为第二语言的外国学生，您有哪些教学建议呢？

Linda Badan教授：汉语是一种在学习之初就能给人以满足感的语言。一步一步地去发现文字是如何构成的，发现书写系统背后的规则以及声调所起的重要作用，这些过程着实令人着迷。作为一个讲罗曼语的人，从一开始我就觉得自己不仅仅是在学习一门新的语言，而是在发现一个新的世界。然而，从正确发音“你好”、“你忙不忙？”这类简单句到高度熟练地掌握这门语言的道路是漫长的。汉语并不会变容易，但当你意识到你可以用如此迷人如此异域风（对欧洲人来说）的语言来阅读一本书或发送复杂的微信信息时，真的是非常具有成就感。

学习汉语需要不断的投入和付出。当然，学习任何一种语言，都需要每天练习。相比于短时间内集中学习，而后又长时间终止该语言的学习，还是每天都练习一点“听，说，读”的效果更好。我还建议你们不仅要练习课本上的内容，还可以做一些你喜欢的语言练习，比如看有字幕的电视连续剧（可以看一遍有英文字幕的，然后再看一遍有中文字幕的），读《汉语分级阅读》上的小说，学唱中文歌曲（这是我特别喜欢的练习），并且参与到实际的语言交流与对话中去。

对于一个讲罗曼语的人来说，汉字是汉语中最独特的元素。汉字需要大量记忆并关注其中的细节。现在有很多按HSK级别分类的应用软件供你使用，例如，抽认卡练习很有用，你可以直接在手机上使用。我总会先确定好我计划学习的汉字数量，并且每天都用这些软件来练习。我发现把一个字连同它的拼音和声调一起写几遍（至少10遍）是很重要的。再说一次，每天学习有限数量的汉字比花一整天学习许多汉字要好。

学习汉语需要激情和热忱。当然，你进步得越多，挑战就越大，但同时，你学的越多，你对中国文化的了解也就越多。所以，总结一下：永不放弃，加油！

02.

訾姝瑶：既然您学习过汉语，而且您的研究涉及到汉语结构的句法分析，那么您能和我们分享一下您在学习汉语时遇到的困难，以及您在进行语言研究时解决这些问题的方法吗？

Linda Badan教授：学习语言学意味着要学习人类语言的许多不同方面，例如，单词、意义、发音，当然还有句子及其结构。通过这些学习，你可以学会一个有用的术语——我们可以把它称为“元语言”，“元语言”不仅可以用来学习，也可以用来谈论语言。这使得人们能够更深入地理解语言及其更深层次的属性。

除了学习汉字书写系统和记忆汉字的困难之外，我遇到的最大的困难是我应该如何理解汉语的语法特性。很多时候，我只是被要求记住一个特定的语序，然而并没有真正的理解它。通过学习语言学，我对语言发挥其功能的方式有了更深入的了解，并能将其应用于汉语。这使我能够更好地理解汉语的语法特性，认识到汉语与我所知道的其他语言之间的相似性、差异以及他们各自的语言模式，并帮助我做出有效的预测和概括。有了这个技能，我才可以真正地理解一些具体的问题，比如话题和主语的区别是什么，这是学习汉语的一个关键点（这后来成为了我博士论文的主要研究方向!），还有结果性构式和关系从句等问题。通过语言学的镜头，我可以看到简单的线性语序背后的抽象结构，理解句子的深层结构，更重要的是，掌握了术语后可以提出更好的研究问题。这种更深层次的视角让汉语学习不再是一个简单的语言学习过程，而是一个永无止境的新探索。

03. 

訾姝瑶：语言学的研究不应该只局限于一个分支，我们了解到您的研究涉及理论语言学和语言习得。关于发掘自己的研究兴趣，您能给我们一些建议吗？

Linda Badan教授：能够长时间专注于研究一个主题是一段丰富而充实的经历。尤其是在攻读博士学位期间，我感觉自己仿佛正在成为某一特定领域的真正的专家，我能够找到自己正在研究的问题的核心和关键。那段时间，我发现自己一直在思考，甚至做梦也在思考相关问题。但是，我觉得自己更像一个探险家，不能把自己只局限于研究一个主题。灵感来自阅读。如果你正在研究一个主题，我建议要尽可能多地阅读。在今天，语言学中任一主题的文献都浩如烟海，作为一个年轻的研究者很容易迷失方向。你需要不断寻找新的文章和材料，每次遇到感兴趣的点，一定要记下笔记，留作将来研究之用。如果你能坚持这样做下去，迟早都会发现值得研究的问题。从长远来看，你会发现自己所遇到的许多不同的问题其实是由一个共同的潜在的线连在一起的。当然，多与老师、同学讨论也很重要：分享想法是最重要的灵感来源之一。

04.

訾姝瑶：句末语气词在汉语句子的学习和理解中起着重要的作用。您能针对如何掌握句末语气词为汉语学习者提供一些建议吗？

Linda Badan教授：我不是汉语教师，所以要回答这个问题我是缺乏特定背景的。但是，单从个人角度以及我自己学习汉语的经验来看，我认为习得汉语语气词的主要挑战之一源于它们的异质功能，这些功能在传统汉语语法中没有详尽的说明和解释。汉语句末语气词一般被归为独特的一类，而且并没有对其子类进行明确区分。例如，决定句子类型的语气词（如疑问标记）应该与具有语篇功能和表达说话人观点的语气词区分开来。这种区分是至关重要的。然而，教学材料中往往较多地介绍了句型语气词，而很少分析语篇语气词。因此，我的建议可能主要是针对教师而非学生：分析单个语气词，并在适当的语境中展示它们的不同用法会有很大的帮助。在说明语篇标记词的各种用法时，语境化是非常重要的，这一点也很明确。对于学生，我建议他们仔细观察每个语气词在不同语境中的表现，并试着在自己的母语中找到与其对等的表达。

05.

訾姝瑶：话题化和焦点化结构可以出现在“高缘”（High Periphery）和“低缘”（Low Periphery）范围内，您认为“高缘”可以多“高”，“低缘”又是多“低”呢？

Linda Badan教授：句法边缘研究是制图项目研究的核心组成部分，目前学者们也在广泛讨论这一话题。自Rizzi（1997）（该研究是以意大利语为基础的左缘结构研究）以来，制图理论和句法边缘的研究一直在不断发展，对它的相关解释已经非常详细，并且已经扩展应用到许多不同类型的语言研究中。最初，“高缘”（High Periphery）只是IP之上的句法区域，包括话题、焦点和wh成分。现在它已经形成了一个丰富的功能中心语序列，致力于研究与语篇相关的成分，如语篇标记词。事实上，有人认为语篇标记出现在ForceP之上的一个专门的句法层，称为言语行为域（Speech Act domain）（Speas & Tenny 2003，Hill 2007，Giorgi 2010，Coniglio & Zegrean 2010，2012，Haegeman & Hill 2013等等）。言语行为域中的功能投射是层级构成的，它们囊括了言外之意中心语的行为方面，并且规范了说话人的态度、对话语内容的承诺以及与听话人的关系。因此，如果从信息结构成分所在位置高于IP层这一观点出发，同时根据大量制图研究的结果显示，话语标记之类的成分的确高于ForceP：显然，我们在往越来越“高”的位置发展了！

这一观点非常有趣，因为它是一种可以引领我们定义“语篇语法”的方法，将句法分析带到句子之外，并开始关注语篇内句子之间的关系。我对句法研究的这个领域非常感兴趣，因为它使我们把注意力转移到了接口分析上。为此，我们必须考虑语言分析的不同层次（尽管它们相互关联）（参见Rizzi & Bocci 2017，该文章回顾了始于意大利语左缘研究的制图发展过程）。这把我们带到了一个更加跨学科的工作中，同时使我们对语言的运行机制了解得更加透彻。

所谓“低缘”（Low Periphery）是指IP层和vP层之间的范围，它和“高缘”有明显的相似之处，即小句内焦点位置下面是小句内话题的位置（Belletti & Shlonsky 1995，Belletti 2004及后续著作）。根据制图理论的精神，边缘位置上不同的功能投射与（部分）不同的语调和解读相关。这样一来，高缘、低缘处的话题或焦点之间的可选择性就排除掉了。换言之，高缘和低缘在各方面的表现应该是相同的。正如许多研究所表明的那样，如果可以在高缘和低缘之间建立一个平行关系，那么我们就可以假设不同的焦点和话题位置上具有不同的韵律轮廓并对应于不同的解释。

06.

訾姝瑶：有的话题和句子的其他成分之间没有语法关联，而汉语被认为是话题显著性语言。根据您的研究和分析，这些话题被称为“相关性话题”。那我们应该如何区分这类话题和主语呢？

Linda Badan教授：Li & Thompson（1976，1981）将现代汉语定义为“话题突出性语言”，引起了人们对汉语话题结构的浓厚兴趣。尤其是语言学家们非常渴望弄清楚什么是话题，它与主语有何不同。这一问题的重要性与制图理论所给出的具体分类方式或标签无关。在语用层面，我们一般采用Li & Thompson（1981：15）对话题的定义，即话题是句子所谈论的内容，它指的是说话人假定听话人对特定话语有所了解。在句法层面，如果用通俗的术语来解释的话，话题是指典型主语位置以上，即IP层以上的所有成分。如果我们把汉语看作是SVO语序，那么和罗曼语一致，汉语中话题的初始位置和典型的SVO语序形成了对比，所以它就是一个标记性位置。

通常认为话题结构的构成由两部分组成：第一部分是话题化成分，它总是出现在主语之前；第二部分是紧随话题之后的评述，它是谈论话题的句子。现有文献中已经发现一些可以明确区分汉语话题和主语的相关属性，例如，话题后面可以有停顿，使其与句子的其他部分区别开来；话题还可以利用语气词使其分离于句子，如助词“啊”、“呀”、“么”、“呢”、“吧”；此外，在评述中，话题可以由代词或别称复指。

我的研究主要集中于区分话题化成分与主语，尤其是这两个成分与动词的不同关系。主语必须与动词有直接关系，而话题则不必（当然，当一个论元出现在左缘结构上时，话题也可以和动词有直接关系；在这种情况下，该句子必须处于合适的语境之中）。下面的例子可以说明这一点，这应该是文献中有关汉语话题化最经典的例子了，所以学界称之为“汉语式话题”：

“那场火幸亏消防队来得快”

‘(As for) that fire, fortunately the fire brigade came fast’

(Li & Thompson 1981：34)

当使用“汉语式话题”这个标签时，我们想要的是一个出现在句首的成分而且该成分与主要动词没有任何直接的语法关系：句首成分“那场火”（that fire）与动词之间没有任何题元关系，但它是话题，是评述的内容。这类结构似乎是汉语特有的，因此Li & Thompson认为汉语是一种话题突出的语言，这和主语突出的英语形成了对比。从这点看，话题突出可以说是是一个重要的类型学特征，可以用来比较不同的语言。但是请注意，在同一个句子中，即使话题和句子的其余成分没有联系，这也并不排除动词主语（消防队‘fire brigade’）可以出现在评述中。在我的研究中，我曾假设存在一个表达更复杂的边缘中心，试图来说明“汉语是话题突出性语言”这一主张是如何融入于制图研究中的，我已经在汉语与罗曼语的比较研究中采用了这一方法。

07.

訾姝瑶：您认为语言运用的熟练程度对制图分析有影响吗？

Linda Badan教授：我认为熟练掌握所研究的语言不仅对制图分析很重要，而且对任何一般的语言分析也很重要。关于这一点，至少有以下三个原因：（1）在更合适的语言环境中构建目标语言现象是很重要的；（2）熟练掌握目标语言，才能在日常使用中对该语言的不同含义理解得更具体，同时有助于激发兴趣，提出新问题；（3）熟练掌握目标语言可以帮助你确切地表达出问题。

此外需要注意的是，即使你对一门外语掌握得非常熟练，在对口语进行详细的句法分析时，与母语者的沟通也是必要的。我还发现，有时我们所研究的语言不是母语也可以成为一种优势，这样你就可以作为一个旁观者，从元语言的角度出发思考问题，这在理论语言学家的实践研究中非常有用。

English Version

01.

Shuyao Zi: As for foreign students who take Chinese as the second language, what’s your pedagogical suggestions for them?

Prof. Linda Badan: Chinese is a language that gives much satisfaction at the beginning of the learning path. It is fascinating to discover, step after step, how characters are built, the rules behind its writing system and the crucial role played by tones. As a Romance language speaker, I remember that from the very beginning I felt I wasn’t simply learning a language but also discovering a new world. However, the path from pronouncing correctly 你好 or 忙不忙？to a high level of proficiency is long. Chinese doesn’t become easier but, when you realize that you can read a book or simply send complex WeChat messages in such a fascinating (and, for a European, exotic) language, the feel of accomplishment is really great.

Studying Chinese requires constant dedication. Of course, as any type of language, practicing every day is crucial. Doing a little of listening, speaking and reading every day is better than concentrate a lot of study in a short period of time and then take long breaks. I also recommend trying to exercise not only with the school books but also doing something that you like with the language, like watching nice TV series with subtitles (maybe once with English subtitles and then once more with Chinese subtitles), reading “Graded Chinese Reader” novels, learning songs (an exercise that I particularly loved) and participating in real language exchanges and conversations.

Of course, the most peculiar elements of Chinese language, particularly for a Romance language speaker, are the characters. Chinese characters require a lot of memory and attention to details. There are a lot of apps nowadays, organized by HSK level, that you can use. For instance, I find it useful to practice with flashcards, which are available directly on your mobile phone. I always make sure to decide on a limited number of words I want to learn and I make sure I practice with them every day. I find it important to write a character several times (at least 10 times) together with its pinyin and tone. Again, it is better to study a limited amount of characters every day, than spending a whole day on many words.

Chinese requires passion. Sure, the more you advance, the more it becomes challenging but, at the same time, the more you learn the more you come to know also about Chinese culture. So, to conclude: Never give up and 加油！

02.

Shuyao Zi: Since you’ve studied Chinese and your research involves the syntactic analysis of Chinese construction, could you please share with us the difficulties you’ve encountered while learning Chinese and how have you dealt with them while doing linguistic studies?

Prof. Linda Badan: Studying linguistics means learning about many different aspects of human language, such as, words, meaning, sounds and of course sentences and their structure. By doing so, you acquire a useful terminology – we could say a “metalanguage” – not only to learn but also to speak about language. This enables a deeper understanding of language and its deeper properties.

Apart from the difficulties in acquiring the writing system and how to memorize the characters, the biggest difficulty I encountered had to do with the way the grammatical properties of Chinese were explained to me. Often times, I was just expected to learn a certain word order by heart, without understanding it. By studying linguistics, however, I gained a deeper insight in the way languages work, which I was then able to apply to Chinese. This allowed me to better appreciate the grammatical properties of Chinese, by recognizing similarities, patterns and differences between Chinese and the other languages I know and helping me in making useful predictions and generalizations. Thanks to this skill, I could really understand, for instance, what is the difference between a topic and a subject, a crucial point in studying Chinese (later, this would become my main research interest for my PhD thesis!) as well as other things such as resultative structures and relative clauses. Through the lens of linguistics, I could see the abstract structure behind the simple linear word order, understand the deep skeleton of sentences and, very importantly, gain the terminology to formulate better questions. This deeper perspective made my study of Chinese not only a simple language learning process but also an endless new discovery.

03.

Shuyao Zi: The study of linguistics shouldn’t be limited to just one branch. We know that your research has involved both theoretical linguistics and language acquisition. Would you mind giving us some advice in finding out our research interests?

Prof. Linda Badan: Focusing for a long time exclusively on one topic is a great and fulfilling experience. This happened to me especially during my PhD studies, when I could feel I was becoming a real expert on a specific domain and able to reach the spine and core of the problem I was investigating. I got to the point where I found myself constantly thinking – in fact, even dreaming! – about it. However, I think my nature is more that of an explorer and, after all, I couldn’t just limit myself to only one topic. The inspiration came from reading. If you are working on a topic, my main suggestion is in fact to read as much as you can about it. The literature nowadays, pretty much on any topic in linguistics, is as vast as an ocean. In fact, it is easy to get lost as a young researcher. You really feel like you never stop finding new articles and materials. So, every time you encounter something that awakens your interest in some way, make sure to take a note and leave it there for future research. If you continue working in this way, sooner or later a puzzle and a corresponding research question start taking shape. In the long run, you realize that the many different things you have encountered are after all united by a common underlying thread. Of course, it is also important that you discuss with your teachers and colleagues as much as you can: Sharing ideas is one of the most important sources of inspiration.

04.

Shuyao Zi: Final particles play an important role in Mandarin sentence learning and understanding. Do you have any suggestions for the Chinese learners to acquire the final particles?

Prof. Linda Badan: I am not a Chinese language teacher, so I don’t have a specific background in this sense. However, from a pure personal point of view and on the basis of my own experience in learning Chinese, I think that one of the main challenges when acquiring Chinese particles is related to their heterogeneous functions. These functions are generally not illustrated extensively enough in traditional Chinese grammars. Mandarin sentence final particles are generally classified as a unique group, without clearly distinguishing between the different types of particles. For example, particles that determine the sentence type (such as interrogative markers) should be distinguished from particles that have discourse functions and express the speaker’s point of view. This distinction is crucial. However, whereas clause-type particles are well described in the didactic materials, discourse particles are generally less analyzed. Therefore, my suggestion is perhaps mainly directed towards teachers than students: Analyzing individual particles and showing the different usages within appropriate contexts would be of a great help. Indeed, contextualization is crucial when illustrating the variety of uses of discourse markers in general. Then, to students I would suggest to look at each particle in the whole range of its different contexts and to try to find equivalent expressions in their own native language.

05.

Shuyao Zi: Topicalization and focalization structures can occur in the High and Low Peripheries. How high do you think the “High Periphery” is and how low is the “Low Periphery”?

Prof. Linda Badan: The syntactic peripheries are a central component of the cartographic program and they are still object of extensive discussion. Since Rizzi’s (1997) study of the left periphery, mainly based on Italian, the cartographic approach and the study of the syntactic peripheries has developed consistently. It has reached a highly detailed articulation and it has been extended to many typologically different languages. Originally, the high periphery was simply the syntactic zone above the IP, hosting topics, foci and wh-elements. Today, it has been further articulated in a rich sequence of functional heads dedicated to discourse-related elements such as discourse markers. Indeed, it has been proposed that discourse markers occur in a dedicated syntactic layer above ForceP called the Speech Act domain (Speas & Tenny 2003, Hill 2007, Giorgi 2010, Coniglio & Zegrean 2010, 2012, Haegeman & Hill 2013 among many others). The functional projections within the Speech Act domain are hierarchically organized, they encode the performative aspect of illocutionary heads and codify the speaker’s attitude, her commitment towards the content of utterance and her relation towards the addressee. Therefore, starting from the idea of having information structure elements in a position higher than the IP, a considerable number of cartographic studies have clearly shown that elements such as discourse markers are even higher than ForceP: We are clearly going higher and higher!

This argument is particularly interesting because it is a way to go towards what we could define as the “grammar of discourse”, bringing syntactic analysis beyond the sentences and towards the relation between sentences within discourse. This area of syntactic studies is particularly interesting to me, because it compels us to direct our attention to the analysis of the interfaces. To do so, we must take into account different – although interrelated – levels of linguistic analysis (see on this a recent article by Rizzi and Bocci, 2017, which retraces the development of the study of the periphery starting from the map that was initially developed for Italian). This takes us to a more interdisciplinary type of work and to a more articulated view of how language works.

The low periphery, is the area within the IP and right above the vP. It displays a significant resemblance with the high periphery, hosting a clause internal focus position followed by a clause internal topic position (Belletti & Shlonsky, 1995, and Belletti, 2004 and subsequent work). In the spirit of cartography, different functional projections in the peripheries are associated to (partly) different intonations and interpretations. In this way, the optionality between topics or foci in high and low periphery should be excluded. In other words, the high and low periphery should behave alike in all respects. As a number of studies have demonstrated, if it is possible to establish a parallelism between high and low periphery, then it is plausible to postulate the possibility of having distinct focus and topic positions that have different prosodic contours, and correspond to different interpretations.

06. 

Shuyao Zi: Chinese has been regarded as a “Topic-prominent” language because certain topics have no grammatical link with the rest of the sentence. These items are called “Aboutness Topics” according to your analysis. How can we make a distinction between such kind of topic and subject?

Prof. Linda Badan: The early definition of Mandarin as a “Topic-prominent language” proposed by Li & Thompson (1976, 1981) has risen a vivid interest for topic structures in Mandarin. In particular, linguists wondered what a topic is and how it differs from a subject. This is a question whose importance is independent from the specific classifications or labels that are given within the cartographic approach. At the pragmatic level, we generally assume the definition of topic given by Li & Thompson (1981:15): The topic is “what the sentence is about and it refers to something about which the speaker assumes the person listening to the utterance has some knowledge”. From a syntactic point of view, and in very general terms, topic is everything that comes above the canonical subject position, above IP. If we consider Chinese as a SVO language, then also in Chinese, on pair with Romance languages, the initial position of the topic is a marked position, since it contrasts with the canonical SVO word-order.

The topic structure configuration is generally conceived as consisting of two parts: the topicalized element, which invariably occurs before the subject, and the comment, which is a clause that follows the topic and “says something about it”. In the literature a number of properties have been disclosed to clearly distinguish a topic from a subject in Chinese. For instance, in contrast to subjects, topics can be followed by a pause that sets them apart from the rest of the sentence. Also, topics can be separated from the clause by a particle, such as a, ya, me, ne, ba. Finally, topics can be resumed in the comment by a pronoun or an epithet.

My own studies focus on the difference between topicalized elements and subjects with particular reference to the different relations these two elements have with the verb. A subject must have a direct relationship with the verb, while a topic need not (but it can, of course, for instance when an argument appears in the left periphery; in that case the sentence must be in an appropriate context). This observation can be exemplified by the following example, which is probably the most known example of topicalization in Chinese mentioned in the literature, so that it has come to be known as “Chinese-style topic”: 

那場火幸会消防队来得快

‘(As for) that fire, fortunately the fire brigade came fast’

(Li & Thompson 1981: 34) 

When we use the label Chinese-style topic we intend an element which appears at the beginning of the sentence without having any direct grammatical relationship with the main verb: The initial constituent 那場火 ‘that fire’, indeed, is not linked to the verb by any thematic relation, but it is the topic of what the comment is about. This type of structure seemed to be unique to the Chinese language and induced Li & Thompson to claim that Chinese is a Topic-prominent language in contrast, for instance, to English, which is claimed to be subject-prominent. In this sense, Topic-prominence has been conceived as a significant typological feature in terms of which different languages can be compared. Notice however that, in that very same sentence, the fact that we have a topic which is not linked to the rest of the sentence, does not exclude the presence of the subject of the verb (消防队 ‘fire brigade’) within the comment. In my work I tried to show how the claim that Chinese is a Topic-prominent language can be accommodated within the cartographic project by assuming a peripheral spine with a more complex articulation and I have tried to do so in a comparative perspective with Romance languages.

07.

Shuyao Zi: Do you think proficiency in language use has an impact on cartographic analysis?

Prof. Linda Badan: I think that having a high proficiency of the language that is the object of your studies is important not only for a cartographic analysis but, in fact, for any linguistic analysis in general. There are at least three reasons for this: (1) It is important to be able to frame your target linguistic phenomena in the more appropriate language context; (2) it helps you individuate the different shades of the language in its everyday use, stimulating interest and raising new questions; (3) it helps you formulate the right questions.

I am also convinced that even when your level of proficiency is high, consultation with native speakers is absolutely necessary for a correct and detailed syntactic analysis of spoken language. This said, I have also learned that not being a native speaker can sometimes be an advantage. It puts you in the position of an external observer and invites you to develop a metalinguistic perspective, which is very useful in the daily practice of the theoretical linguist.

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编辑：马晓彤 王竹叶 訾姝瑶 

排版：马晓彤 安镜儒

审校：陈旭 王丽媛