Comparative Study Of Topic Sign "Duiyu﹑Zhiyu﹑Guanyu"

“Duiyu﹑Zhiyu﹑Guanyu” are common function words in modern Chinese with a specialgrammatical meaning and function, and all of them can be located in the beginning of the sentenceto mark the topic.As a topic maker,“Duiyu﹑Zhiyu﹑Guanyu” are generally located in the beginning of thesentence in the structure, presenting a format of "X yu T, C",“T” is the topic, C is the rheme ordescription, which can be an independent sentence. Topics and subjects have different syntacticpositions, between topics and Assyria there are pause, modal particle or parenthesis. Semantically,there are three syntax and semantics relations between the topics which is marked by“Duiyu”,”Zhiyu” and” Guanyu” and the rheme: the first one is the argument coreference betweentopics and predicates in the rheme; the second is the coordinate relationship between topics andnominals in the rheme; the third is the limit relationship or the “theme—content” relationshipbetween topic and the whole rheme. These three kinds of semantic relationships can be summed upas “assignment” relationship. The topics always grant assignment to the rheme, such as predicatesin the rheme, nominals, or the whole rheme. Moreover, the topics marked by "Guanyu","Zhiyu"and “Duiyu” have the function of theme and assignment.There are two consequences to exchange the topic maker words “Guanyu”,“Zhiyu” and“Duiyu” which are separately placed in “Guanyu” type topic sentences,“Zhiyu” type topicsentence and “Duiyu” type topic sentence. One is that it is possible to interchange each other,though the semantic meaning has changed. The other is that the words cannot be replaced for thesentences formed are unacceptable.In general,“Guanyu”,“Zhiyu” and “Duiyu” can be freely exchanged in topic sentencesmarked by them, for the reason that “Guanyu”,“Zhiyu” and “Duiyu” can be all used as topicmarkers. After a long development of blur, they all can be placed in the beginning of the sentenceand used as the mark topics. But the degrees of their development are different.“Zhiyu” hasalready become a typical topic marker. However, as a topic maker the development of “Guanyu”and “Duiyu” is much slower than “Zhiyu”.The condition that “Guanyu”,“Zhiyu” and “Duiyu” can’t be replaced and semantic changedafter replaced shows that "Guanyu","Zhiyu" and “Duiyu” have their own differences to marksubject. When marking topics,“Guanyu” emphasizes the “theme—content” relationship of topicsand nominals in rheme,“Zhiyu” has the associated relationship with foregoing sentences, and “Duiyu” lays stress on the treat object relationship between topics and rheme. What explainedabove are related to the specific semantics of them. Although after continually development of blur,"Guanyu","Zhiyu" and “Duiyu” can be all used as topic markers, some of their own lexicalmeanings still adhere to them. So “Guanyu” in “Guanyu” type topic sentences with the relationshipof “theme—content” can not be replaced by “Zhiyu” and “Duiyu”. Meanwhile, in “Duiyu” typetopic sentence, when topics and rheme have the treat object relationship,“Duiyu” can’t be replacedby “Guanyu” and “Zhiyu”. On the contrary,“Zhiyu” has a strong ability to mark topics, but thesemantic meaning will be changed when it is replaced by “Guanyu” and “Duiyu”.