Topic Marker

This chapter examines topic marking, discussing its formal realizations and theoretical implications. We show that across language types, topic marking is achieved through a combination of prosodic cues, word order, and segmental units. Specialized topic markers, such as the Shanghainese tiduncis “indicative-pause markers (topic particles)”, should be analyzed as dedicated syntactic heads. The distribution of tiduncis is governed by rigorous syntactic constraints that permit their attachment to diverse phrase types but restrict their placement to specific structural positions. Evidence from Shanghainese shows that certain topic particles are used specifically to contrast a topic against explicit or implicit counterparts, where such a function is also differentiated from natural focus and contrastive focus.