Topicalization in Asian Englishes

Topicalization has been found to occur frequently in the English spoken by many Asians but the reasons for this have not been scrutinized. This book bridges the gap by considering the structures of the major contact languages, the roles of second-language acquisition and politeness and other factors to explain the frequency of topicalization.

Sven Leuckert is a lecturer in the Institute of English and American Studies at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany.

1. Introduction 2. Approaching topicalization 3. Topic-prominence in Asian contact languages 4. Development and variety status of four Asian Englishes 5. Corpus analysis: Data basis and methodology 6. Forms, functions, and frequencies of topicalization 7. Explaining topicalization frequencies 8. Conclusion and outlook