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 (22)
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]>