Abstract
Typologically, English and Chinese, belong to different language typological systems respectively. Chinese is a topic prominent language in which topic plays an important role in the formation of a sentence whereas English belongs to a subject prominent language in which subject is an indispensable element that determines the English sentence pattern (Li & Thompson, 1976). This current study attempts to step forward on the basis of the previous research, focusing on a special sentence pattern--passive voice, and investigates on topicprominence in interlanguage of Chinese EFL learners. The present study indicates that, the acquisition of passive voice by Chinese EFL learners also reflects the characteristics of second language acquisition process from topic-prominence to subject-prominence, and the typological transfer hypothesis and the Topic-to-Subject Hypothesis which was proposed by Yang (2008) are testified. The findings of the present study contribute to a better understanding of Chinese EFL learners’ interlanguage development from topic-prominence to subject-prominence.
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