AN ARGUMENT FOR TWO DIFFERENT POSITIONS OF A TOPIC CONSTITUENT

The present paper is about the syntactic positions in which topicalized constituents can occur. Within the Government and Binding Theory, it seems to be commonly accepted that all topic constituents are in the position adjoined to CP. However, there is no rational evidence that a topicalized constituent must occupy this position, if the topmost CP can be left empty. In this paper, it is argued that a topic constituent may be in either a CP-adjoined or an IP-adjoined position, depending upon the structure of the main clause. Thus, it is shown that neither Chomsky's 1977 nor Baltin's 1982 analysis of Topicalization is adequate in that a topic constituent is restricted to a unique position.