Abstract:

The inverted elements at end of the so-called inverted sentences in Shandong dialect are actually sentence final topics as they share the [+ABOUT] and [+DEFINITE] features of the canonical topics. These sentence final topics carrying with themselves the [+ABOUT] and [+DEFINITE] features are moved according to the Wh-feature Attraction Principle (D. S. Ma) to the specifier of Topic Phrase to check the strong head the [+ABOUT] and [+DEFINITE] features of the head Topic0 at the end of the sentence as Chinese is a head C final language. The internal merge of the sentence final topics in Shandong Dialect is localized in the concerted ring of the Broca’s area and the Wernicke’s area connected by the fiber tracts via the dorsal pathways and ventral pathways, as movement of topics is triggered by both syntactic and semantic requirements.

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