Topic-comment constructions in English

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A lot of people say that English is "subject-prominent," rather than "topic-prominent," in that only the subject can be the topic, but I don't think this is strictly true.

Here are some topic-comment constructions that you can come across in English:

1.) As for the conductor, I was going to inform her of the mechanical problems with the train.

This one seems like grammarians (prescriptivists) would put their seal of approval on. Clearly, here, the topic is the conductor, while the subject is the speaker.

2.) So that manager you were trying to network with, have you contacted him yet?

This one grammarians might look down upon, but it is conversational and used by native speakers, so from a linguistic (descriptivist) perspective, it is correct.

Nevertheless, people may not "count" this form because grammarians look down up on it and exclude it from their conclusion. I don't think that's a very good idea. What matters is what native speakers use, not what a bunch of prescriptivists say "should be."

So clearly, English can also make use of the topic-comment construction, and the topic is not always also the subject of the sentence.