ABSTRACT
Placement of a non-subject constituent at the beginning of the sentence: He declared his candidacy yesterday vs Yesterday he declared his candidacy. Topicalization is used for specific communicative purposes. A distinction is generally made between ‘true’ topicalization, where the topicalized element functions as the theme or topic ( theme vs rheme, topic vs comment), and ‘false’ topicalization, which serves to emphasize or contrast the element in question. In general, all major sentence constituents except the subject and the finite verb can be topicalized.
