4.2. Topic
In LSC topics are also expressed through syntactic and prosodic strategies. The topicalized constituents are placed at the beginning of the sentence, changing the basic word order [SYNTAX 2.3.3.3], as illustrated below.
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a) onion, ix1 hate
‘Onions, I hate.’
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b) ix1 brother ix3, tomorrow morning, ix3 car buy
‘As for my brother, tomorrow morning he will buy a car.’
(examples a-b based on Pfau & Quer, 2010: 9)
In example (a), the direct object is placed at the beginning of the sentence, and it is also marked by specific non-manual marking (raised eyebrows). In example (b), we can observe two topicalized elements: the first one is an aboutness topic, it is related to the subject position, and the second one is a scene-setting topic expressed as a temporal adjunct. In this example, both topics are also marked with raised eyebrows, and there is also topic stacking involved in the sentence.