This paper sets out to analyze various types of thematized or topicalized sentences in Japanese and Spanish under a single procedure of ″thematization ″. Sentences analyzed include so-called double-subject sentences and pseudo-cleft sentences in Japanese and left-dislocated sentences, cleft sentences, and pseudo-cleft sentences in Spanish.
Thematization is the procedure whereby a copy of the constituent designated as the theme is attached to the head of the proposition, and the original constituent in the proposition is then pronominalized. For example, double-subject sentence (1) is derived by thematization from the proposition (2), in which the head noun zisyo modified by an adjective is designated as the theme.
(1) Zisyo wa atarasii no ga ii.
(2) atarasii zisyo ga ii [theme: zisyo]
Differences in the procedure of thematization in Japanese and Spanish are:
1) In Japanese the theme-marker wa is attached to the theme; in
Spanish nothing is attached.
2) In Japanese the theme of a sentence may be an argument of the predicate, a genitive noun, or a head noun modified by an adjectiver genitive noun; in Spanish only an argument of the, predicate may be thematized.
3) In Japanese the pronominalized constituent generally becomes null; in Spanish it becomes a clitic pronoun.