Talk:Topicalization

Article under construction
I am currently drafting the article. Notes, sources, and syntactic trees will be added. I invite feedback. How and where can the article be improved?

Verb phrase vs. sentence
Wouldn't "You still have much to learn" be classified as a sentence rather than a verb phrase?

164.51.50.144 (talk) 21:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, you're right. The intent of the trees was to make a comparison possible across differing ways of analyzing sentence structure (constituency vs. dependency). I have added an additional clarifying statement in parenthesis.--Tjo3ya (talk) 21:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

English-specific syntax
All the syntactic description of the process is specific to English, so I have added "in English" to the lede sentence. To discuss, please ping me. --Thnidu (talk) 08:01, 4 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with that.

Except that topicilzation is not exclusive to the English language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sign_Language_grammar#Topic_and_main_clauses states: "Topicalization is used productively in ASL and often results in surface forms that do not follow the basic SVO word order."

and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language#Grammar states about the Japanese grammar that "The basic sentence structure is topic–comment." The problem is that the syntactic descriptions probably should not have been English specific in the first place. 67.236.52.237 (talk) 21:48, 7 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm in favor of adding examples and discussion from other languages. Go for it.--Tjo3ya (talk) 15:56, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Another that form
It's a bit idiomatic, but not beyond the pale.
 * A fungus pizza, that I won't eat.

Is this pertinent? I have no idea. &mdash; MaxEnt 00:36, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Low quality
The recent additions concerning split topicalization are of low quality. The line spacing is off; the examples are not set off from the text appropriately. The acceptability of some of the examples is debatable, e.g. Beans, he likes only green ones. The wording and use of upper/lower case is bad, as if written by a non-native speaker. The overall impression is one of sloppiness. I will remove the additions again if there are no improvements in these areas. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjo3ya (talk • contribs) 22:37, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would tend to agree - not ready for primetime. It looks like the material was added by a few editors who joined recently and seem to be working together on this article. I'm wondering if this is part of a school project or something? Pinging them in case they want to chime in: . Colin M (talk) 13:11, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
 * hello, yes it was a part of a school project. Nothing written is our own work but the information extracted was from a very credible source listed. I would suggest check out that book. It may not have been written similar to other text on this page but it was our first time editing and writing on Wikipedia. Feel free to edit and add more to the sections at your will. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahamlinguistics (talk • contribs) 01:11, 8 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I've just re-removed the material. I don't doubt that split topicalization is a legit phenomenon worthy of coverage here, nor that the sources cited are reliable, but there are a lot of issues with the comprehensibility of the material as presented. There are a lot of abbreviations and technical terms that need to be explained and/or wikilinked (TOP, CP, C, N0, N1, non-quantificational indefinite, restructuring verb). There are also just a lot of issues of grammar, wording, and erratic capitalization. I think these issues need to be addressed before the content is restored. Since you're new to Wikipedia, I would suggest starting with a small section on the topic - like, at least 75% shorter than the previous version. If you're willing to pare it down, I would be happy to help with copy editing and providing suggestions. Once you have a nice clean handful of paragraphs, then you can expand from there. Colin M (talk) 01:49, 8 May 2021 (UTC)