1173: Topic Prominence Feb 24, 2018

In English, it is common for the subject to be the first part of a sentence, whether or not the clause is active or passive. There are ways to avoid this however, depending upon the circumstance, including beginning with an adjunct, such as  with "in English" at the beginning of this paragraph. Some languages, such as Japanese and Korean, place less emphasis on the subject than English—a subject prominent language—does, and instead have topic-prominence. In these languages, rather than always differentiating between the subject and the object, speakers can also differentiate between the topic—what is being talked about—and the comment—what is being said about the topic. In English, the subject is understood to be the topic naturally, which is why the passive voice in necessary for an inversion of the object, but topic-prominent languages don't need a passive necessarily. The effect of topic-prominence is still present in English to an extent; the invented sentence "oranges: he like to eat them" may sound odd out of context, but it is perfectly grammatical. Furthermore, this style of sentence-organization is quite popular in advertising.
Watch the Word Facts Video about vocal fry, out this morning:
https://youtu.be/2YWfhZLMhrQ