A distinctly Chinese sentence structure is the TOPIC-COMMENT STRUCTURE. This is a structure that some of you will have heard of, some will have practiced and others will have never heard even once. For those Chinese learners who have heard of it, they nonetheless often avoid using it, because it is one of those structures that seems fairly unusual relative to how we phrase our thoughts as English-speakers.
So, what IS the topic-comment structure actually? Well, those among you with savant-like counting abilities will have noticed that this structure is made up of 2 parts – a topic part, followed by a comment part. The topic part is just what it says – a statement of the overarching topic or ‘theme’ you are going to say a few (usually > 1) things about right after – this is often just a noun-phrase, but it can also be a short sentence that states an occurrence that is the ‘topic’ of the comments to follow. The ‘comment’ part is then the points you wish to make about the stated topic, which can constitute a single clause, a sentence made up of many clauses or perhaps even something longer.
Although in terms of linguistic theory, what I’m about to say has a tinge of syntactic blasphemy about it, for the learner it really is the case that the topic-comment structure only becomes detectable when you have BOTH a topic AND a subject at the start of the sentence. Let’s look at example to see what I mean:
我的女朋友性格特别好，外表很顺眼儿，说话很可爱。
‘So my girlfriend, she’s got a really great personality,
she looks good and she speaks in a really cute way.’
This, in fact, is a really good way to use the topic-comment structure – when you want to give a list of descriptive comments about someone or something e.g. their personality, their hobbies etc. Let’s now break up the above example to see how the sentence is constructed:
[TOPIC:我的女朋友] – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – |
| [SUBJECT:性格]特别好，
| [SUBJECT:外表]很顺眼儿，
| [SUBJECT:说话]很可爱。
‘So my girlfriend, she’s got a really great personality, she looks good and she speaks in a really cute way.’
Here you can see that we have 2 noun-phrases at the start of the sentence, 我的女朋友 and right after, 性格. This seems a little odd, as we are used to their only being a single noun-phrase at the start, which we call the ‘subject’ of the sentence. In fact, the first of these noun-phrases is the topic and then within the overarching frame of that topic, we have 3 separate full sentences that state individual facts about that topic. Each of those facts may have its own subject, here being ‘her personality’, ‘her looks’ and ‘her (way of) speaking’, respectively.
Another good time to use the topic-comment structure is when describing somebody’s reaction to something. Here’s an example:
[TOPIC:这件事情]，[SUBJECT:大家]都不知道怎么处理好。
‘(About) this matter, no-one knows how best to deal with it.’
As I mentioned above, the topic can be a short-sentence description of an occurrence or event that takes / has taken place:
[TOPIC:特朗普赢得大选]，[SUBJECT:世界各国的人都惊呆了]
‘(In regards to) Trump winning the election, people from countries all over the world are in a state of shock.’
Or our good ol’ favourite:
[TOPIC:认识你] [SUBJECT: (我)]很高兴。
‘I’m happy to meet you (literally: Meeting you, I am happy).’
In a sense, the topic-comment pair is a little like when you have a headline in a news article with a sub-headline right after e.g. ‘Trump Wins Election: People Across the Globe In State of Shock’. So it might help you to think of ‘topics’ as the 1st part of a mini-headline that gives the immediate background for the next thing you are going to say.
So, next time you are describing someone / something, or you are talking about how someone / something reacts to a particular event or occurrence, try to give the topic-comment structure a try! You’ll find that before too long, using it actually becomes quite instinctive – it’s just the initial hurdle that’s the hard part. But as the Chinese say:
千里之行，始于足下。
‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.’
So, as for the topic-comment structure, don’t avoid it – embrace it! 🙂
中文秘诀 | The Secret of Chinese 