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Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 16:2 (2015) ► pp.159–186

Discourse functions of subject left dislocation in Old Occitan

 | University of California, Santa Cruz
This paper reports an empirical study of the discourse-pragmatic functions of subject left dislocation (LD) in Old Occitan. Data come from the complete troubadour biographies, in which the most common manifestation of subject LD is a nominal subject + sentence adverb si + verb, as in “Bertrans de Born si fo uns castellans” [Bertran de Born was a nobleman]. Whereas previous accounts fail to integrate syntax with discourse-pragmatic function, these results reveal the importance of both in explaining the occurrence of subject LD. Using recent approaches to the clausal left periphery (e.g., Benincà 2006), I distinguish LD subjects from conventional (i.e., non-dislocated) pre-verbal subjects. Next, following Fleischman’s (1991) analysis of si in Old French, I illustrate how subject LD structures the flow of information in discourse. In particular, subject LD marks a constituent as a discourse topic and can also introduce a new referent into the discourse and thereby mark it as topical.
Keywords: discourse, Occitan, information structure, dislocation, word order, syntax
Published online: 28 January 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.16.2.01don
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