A syntactic-semantic optimality theoretic model on Hakka topic-comment construction

The purpose of this paper is to show how the basic Topic-Comment ordering pattern Hakka can be accounted for by constraint-based optimality theory. Part linguistic data used in adopted from Xu (2002), while those examples presented syntactic tests are created author. These sentences have been further checked and confirmed a native speaker Hakka. This proposes an Optimality Theoretic (OT) model that takes into account both semantic considerations. It shows information comes play successively at different points OT grammar. First, integrating schema syntax works precisely describe topic-initial sentence pattern. alignment constraints incorporate about semantically defined topic comment constructions constraint design, which interacts with other markedness filter during production. Second, formed evaluate form-meaning pairs process interpretation. In aspect, notions including contrastiveness incorporated theoretical plan pairing syntactically well-formed appropriate meaning. successfully presents optimization illustrating semantics cooperate pair meanings forming expressions.