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<div dir="ltr">Dear All:</div><div dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr"> In Mandarin Chinese, as well as in other Chinese dialects, a topic can be followed by a topic particle chosen from the inventory of topic markers. Most topic markers come from sentence final particles, particularly from question particles, such as <i>me/ma, a, ne, ba</i> in Mandarin, and have semantic connection with SFPs, but they have obviously different functions when serving as topic markers and as SFPs. For instance, there is no force function (interrogative, imperative, etc.) in their usage as topic markers. </div><div dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr"> Danqing Liu</div><div dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div dir="ltr"><br clear="none"></div><div><br clear="none"></div>
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On Thursday, August 1, 2019, 7:09:52 AM GMT+8, Frederick J Newmeyer <fjn@uw.edu> wrote:
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<p class="ydp68a4585cyiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">
</span></font></p><p class="ydp68a4585cyiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">Dear Lingtyp,<span></span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp68a4585cyiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;"><span> </span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp68a4585cyiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">I am looking for examples where topic markers or focus
markers in some language are clearly members of some broad morphosyntactic
category.<span></span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp68a4585cyiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;"><span> </span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp68a4585cyiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">Let me give an example involving negatives of the sort of thing
that I am looking for. Negative elements in various languages are the often members
of a broader category: in Estonian negative particles are auxiliaries, in
Tongan they are complement-taking verbs, in English they are adverbs, and so
on.<span></span></span></font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930yqt8574874150" id="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930yqtfd22966"><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;"><span> </span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">So what I am looking for are parallel examples with topic and
focus markers: cases where a reasonable analysis would assign them to some
broader category.<span></span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;"><span> </span></span></font></p><font size="4"></font><p class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">Thanks,<span></span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;"><span> </span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><p class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;font-family:serif;"><font size="4"><span style="font-family:New serif;">Fritz<span></span></span></font></p><font size="4">
</font><div><div class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930ydp1e4d01e4yiv2998617824gmail_signature" dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><font size="4"><br clear="none">Frederick J. Newmeyer<br clear="none">Professor Emeritus, University of Washington<br clear="none"></font></div><font size="4">Adjunct Professor, U of British Columbia and Simon Fraser U</font><br clear="none"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930yqt8574874150" id="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930yqtfd97056">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">Lingtyp mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a><br clear="none"></div><div class="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930yqt8574874150" id="ydp934713b3yiv9995262930yqtfd21434">
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