If the assumption that discourse organization follows universal pragmatic principles is correct, adult Chinese, speaking a topic-prominent source language, should have no problems discovering its functions in French. Similarly, if these principles have to be acquired in L1, French children should have trouble discovering its functions. A separate question concerns the acquisition of its linguistic form . In Chinese, topics are marked by the first position in the sentence. In French, the topic is marked by dislocations, which consist of a full noun and a clitic.
Topics are necessarily definite, or given information in discourse.
To promote new information to a topic position, both languages use existential constructions. The function of topics is to relate material in a sentence to material in previous or following sentences. This involves introducing subtopics, reintroducing old topics, and expressing contrastive information. Their data shows furthermore that children at early stages have not yet mastered the given-new distinction in general, and that it is not merely a problem with the dislocation. Adult L2 data is analyzed and the results are compared with that from children.