Sentence–internal Topic and Focus in Chinese YU-YIN HSU

It has been a point in dispute whether, in Chinese, the object preposed to the position between the subject and the predicate is Topic (e.g., Tsao (1990) and Paul (2002)) or Focus (e.g., Tsai (1994) and Shyu (1995)). Through the careful examination of this and other constructions, this paper argues that the "split-CP " approach à la Rizzi (1997) can and should be extended to the "lower INFL domain " in Chinese, enabling Topic and/or Focus to appear in this sentence-internal (hereafter S-internal) domain in a specific way to be described below. I find that a bare NP can in fact be either Topic or Focus S-internally. First, the emphatic shi, which is known to modify only a focused item, is compatible with the S-internal NP when it provides an answer to a Wh-question, but not when it bears a given information. Second, it is known that indefinite phrases cannot be interpreted as Topics in Chinese, but the S-internal NP can be indefinite, as reported by Tsai (1994). Thus, it is testified that the S-internal domain can host Topic and Focus. While previous researches only illustrate a one-sided fact, it should be noted that both Topic and Focus are available to S-internal NPs, when proper contexts are provided. Moreover, as expected, Topic and Focus may co-occur S-internally, but in fixed order. I attempt to capture all these facts by postulating Topic and Focus projections in this hierarchica