Left-Dislocation versus Topicalization, a Semantic Characterisation of the former
- Autores: Javier Pérez Guerra
- Localización: ES: Revista de filología inglesa, ISSN 0210-9689, Nº. 20, 1996, págs. 99-118
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
A homogeneous analysis of left-dislocation and topicalisation as movement to first position is not felicitous in light of the different grammatical behaviour of both processes. As a consequence, it has been generally agreed that left-dislocation involves the base-generation of a given constituent in sentence-initial position, whereas topicalised segments are explained by wh-movement. Constituents like as far as I'm concerned or as for fruit have commonly been classified as left-dislocated if they are preposed to clauses like Apples are sweet, the concept of left-dislocation thus becoming a grammatical rag-bag for disjuncts, adjuncts and other discourse matters.
In mitigation of this problem, in this paper, constituents "fronted" by left-dislocation are discriminated by a semantic filter. Such an analysis proves helpful in that it treats left-dislocation as a constructional thematic system, and in that it perfectly accommodates other syntactic phenomena, such as appositive constructions, resumptive pronominalisation, or topicalisation itself.
