Left Dislocation Constructions Research Articles

Un tipus especial d'oracions interrogatives: les interrogatives escindides

This paper deals with the properties of interrogative sentences with a split constituent (or split interrogatives) in Catalan and Spanish. We compare split interrogatives with Wh-questions, yes/no questions, different kinds of confirmatory questions and clitic left dislocation constructions. Split interrogatives show a very clear-cut syntactic and phonological distinction between those constituents to be interpreted as shared or old information (theme) and the constituent which receives the focus of the sentence. Following recent theoretical work on the left periphery of the sentence, we propose that the Ground Phrase projection (placed below ForceP) is especially relevant in split interrogatives and that this relevance yields a derivation with two syntactic movements to the higher functional projections. Such analysis accounts for the surface constituent order found in split interrogatives, the semantic interpretation of each part of the sentence, and the syntactic structure of Wh-constituents, and it covers also several constraints on locality, syntactic distribution, definiteness, and negation that characterize split interrogatives.

Unexpected left dislocation: An English Corpus Study

The discourse function of the syntactic construction left dislocation in English has received significant attention. Prior research has identified at least three distinct form-function correlations underlying left dislocation. This paper examines left dislocation tokens from a corpus of spoken English recorded in South Philadelphia. From this emerges a fourth type of left dislocation not previously identified. We define this variety of left dislocation, termed the Unexpected Subject type, via a Centering Theory analysis of the surrounding discourse. This finding adds even greater diversity to the potential discourse functions underlying the left dislocation construction, and thus lends important support to the claim that the association between syntactic form and discourse function is arbitrary. Future research utilizing much larger corpora will not only allow us to hone the definition of the Unexpected Subject type, but may also reveal that there are indeed more discourse functions of the left dislocation construction that have not been identified.

Areal pragmatics of New Guinea: Thematization, distribution and recapitulative linkage in Papuan narratives

Papuan speech communities in New Guinea share a number of specific discourse preferences that are used in similar ways in certain genres. This article focuses on three discourse practices as they operate in narrative texts; thematization (a strong preference for Theme, Predication or Left Dislocation constructions), distribution (a strong preference to distribute nominals over series of clauses and of modifiers over series of phrases) and recapitulative linkage (connecting clause chains or sentences by tail–head linkage). Thematization occurs especially in discourse initial paragraphs when the time, place, participant and main themes are introduced, and in discourse final paragraphs with summarizing and concluding functions. Thematization combines with non-distributive forms in these contexts to form discourse units in which the number and complexity of nominal phrases is relatively high. Such thematic parts are not organized around progression of events and recapitulative linkage is hardly present. Once the story is underway, distributive tendencies become more dominant, with unmarked, chained forms of recapitulative linkage connecting the often lengthy and ‘verby’ sentences into chaining paragraphs. When marked, thematized recapitulative linkage occurs, this signals thematic discontinuity. Many aspects of the typology of Papuan languages, from demonstrative topic markers to experiential, subordinate and perception complement constructions, can be understood from the perspective of these areal discourse preferences of Papuan speakers. But the identification of these areal pragmatic patterns not only enhances our understanding of the specific nature of Papuan languages, it also has crucial methodological implications for the way field linguists transcribe and analyse whole texts or single expressions from these languages. Ignoring these discourse practices may lead to serious distortions in the transcription and collection of data and in the grammatical description of these languages.

Contact and contracting Spanish

This investigation is inspired by an interest in the contact/contracting grammars of heritage speakers of Spanish who have experienced prolonged exposure to English in the United States and, in particular, what their linguistic performance reveals of their knowledge of lexical subclasses and discursive properties associated with ordering of sentential constituents in the Spanish language. Analysis of data obtained for 24 participants on diverse measures of interpretation and production of unergative and unaccusative predicates and Topicalization and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions indicate that while properties of the core syntax (e.g., properties of TP, AgrS, and AgrO) remain robust, properties of the lexico- and discursive-semantic interface may be vulnerable to attrition or respecification.

The Discourse Function of Left Dislocation in Czech

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On the Semantics of Pronominal Clitics and some of its Consequences

Recent work on the acquisition of the binding conditions suggests that pronominal clitics (PCs) encode the presence of an unsaturated argument position. In other words, PC-constructions encode functional abstraction: the argument position related to the PC is re-opened. This interpretation represents a radical departure from traditional analyses (in virtually every syntactic framework, including HPSG and PrinciplesP (b) the familiar vs. bound-variable interpretation of PCs; (c) the diachronic relationship between clitic left-dislocation constructions (CLLD) and PC-constructions; (d) the properties of Romance CLLD which are still in need of a deep conceptual account, like the (optional) presence of a resumptive clitic and the recursive nature of the topic projections in the left-periphery.

Acquisition of clitic objects in Modern Greek : single clitics, clitic doubling, clitic left dislocation

The present study is concerned with Single Clitics, as weil as with Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions and will test the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiehe 1992), according to which all three constructions involve the same underlying structure. It will be shown that:
 
 - acquisition data pose a problem for the Uniformity Hypothesis (Sportiche 1992) and support rather the idea that Single Clitic, Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions do not involve the same underlying structure,
 
 - omission of definite articles in Clitic Doubling and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions parallels omission of definite articles in simple DPs,
 
 - selective omission of some types of Determiners, i.e. definite articles and use of another type of Determiners, i.e. clitic pronouns, can be explained in terms of the different feature specification of words belonging to the category D and the different status of clitics vs. definite articles.