Cover not available
Part of
Keys to the History of English: Diachronic linguistic change, morpho-syntax and lexicography
Edited by Thijs Porck, Moragh S. Gordon and Luisella Caon
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 363] 2024
► pp. 34–52

Two types of left-dislocation in Old English

| John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

This paper examines two types of left-dislocated structures in Old English: contrastive left-dislocation (CLD) and hanging topic left-dislocation (HTLD). As reported in the literature, the constructions show differences with respect to three properties: the type of the resumptive pronoun (demonstrative or personal pronoun), case (the same or different case of the resumptive and dislocated phrase) and position (low or high position of the resumptive pronoun). It is argued that only the first property – the type of the resumptive pronoun – clearly differentiates the two types in Old English, whereas the other two characteristics are problematic. Some additional support for the CLD/HTLD division is provided by discourse analysis.

Keywords: left-dislocation, contrastive left-dislocation, hanging topic left-dislocation, Old English, resumptive, case, discourse analysis, demonstrative pronoun, personal pronoun
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology and the data
  • 3.Discussion
    • 3.1Property A
    • 3.2Property B
    • 3.3Property C
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.363.02bar
References
Aoun, J. & E. Benmamoun
1998 Minimality, reconstruction and PF-movement. Linguistic Inquiry 29. 569–597. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bartnik, A.
2019 Left-dislocated structures in Old English: A corpus study. KUL.Google Scholar
Boeckx, C. & K. K. Grohmann
2005 Left dislocation in Germanic. In W. Abraham (ed.), Focus on Germanic typology, 131–144. Akademie-Verlag.Google Scholar
Bosworth, J. & T. N. Toller
1900 An Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
den Dikken, M. & B. Surányi
2017 Contrasting contrastive left-dislocation explications. Linguistic Inquiry 48. 543–584. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grohmann, K. K.
2000 A movement approach to contrastive left dislocation. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 25. 3–65.Google Scholar
2003 Prolific domains: On the anti-locality of movement dependecies. John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haeberli, E.
2001 Speculations on the syntax of subordinate clauses in Old English. Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 5. 201–229.Google Scholar
2002 Observations on the loss of verb second in the history of English. In J.-W. Zwart & W. Abraham (eds.), Studies in comparative Germanic syntax, 245–272. John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Los, B.
2012 The loss of verb-second and the switch from bounded to unbounded systems. In A. Meurman-Solin, M. J. López-Couso & B. Los (Eds.), Information structure and syntactic change in the history of English, 21–46. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ott, D.
2014 An ellipsis approach to contrastive left-dislocation. Linguistic Inquiry 45. 269–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pintzuk, S.
1999 Phrase structures in competition: Variation and change in Old English word order. Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Randall, B.
2000 CorpusSearch: A Java program for searching syntactically annotated corpora. Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Scragg, D. G.
(ed.) 1992 The Vercelli Homilies and related texts (Early English Text Society 300). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, A.
2014 Old English syntax. In D. Ringe & A. Taylor (Eds.), The development of Old English, 392–509. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, E. C.
2007 Old English left-dislocations: their structure and information status. Folia Linguistica 41(3/4). 405–441. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Bergen, L.
2003 Pronouns and word order in Old English – with particular reference to the indefinite pronoun man. Routledge.Google Scholar
Van Kemenade, A. & B. Los
2018 Syntax and the morphology of deixis: the loss of demonstratives and paratactic clause linking. In M. Coniglio, A. Murphy, E. Schlachter & T. Veenstra (Eds.), Atypical demonstratives: Syntax, semantics and pragmatics, 127–158. Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Walkden, G.
2014 Syntactic reconstruction and Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wallenberg, J.
2009 Antisymmetry and the conservation of C-command: Scrambling and phrase structure in synchronic and diachronic perspective (Publication No. 3405419) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania]. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.Google Scholar
YCOE =
Taylor, A., A. Warner, S. Pintzuk & F. Beths 2003 The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. [URL]