Crosslinguistic Influence of Topic and Subject Prominence Distinction on L2 Acquisition and Processing

The distinction between topic-prominent languages (TPL) and subject-prominent languages (SPL) was first proposed by Li and Thompson and has since been widely accepted by linguists as a typology to classify languages. The introduction of the notion of topic prominence into the research field of SLA triggered a wealth of studies. Empirical researches of crosslinguistic influence have been conducted from different directions (i.e., topic-prominence (TP) to subject-prominence (SP), or SP to TP) via behavioral or electrophysiological methods, with participants from various L1 backgrounds and language proficiency, but the findings on how the typological distinction functions in L2 acquisition and processing are inconsistent. This paper sorts out and compares the TP and SP features, reviews the previous researches on the transfer of TP and SP features, and comments on its research content and methods.