Chapter published in:
Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics: 20 years of Núcleo de Estudos Gramaticais
Edited by Roberta Pires De Oliveira, Ina Emmel and Sandra Quarezemin
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 260] 2020
► pp. 87–106

Chapter 3
Left- and Right-Dislocation and the speaker’s perspective

| Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
In Italian, topics appear in left- or right-dislocated position and are doubled by clause-internal clitic pronouns. In this paper, the syntax and the contribution to discourse of left- and right-dislocated topics are discussed. We focus on Familiar Topics, the only topic which can appear in either position. It is shown that Familiar Topics do not only involve the retrieval of given information, as is currently assumed, but also contribute to the conversational dynamics by adding the speaker’s perspective on shared information. It is also shown that left and right-dislocated topics have different properties, confirming that Left Dislocation is not the mirror image of Right Dislocation. The discussion includes the comparison between Italian Left and Right Dislocation and German modal particles.
Keywords: Left Dislocation, Right Dislocation, Familiar Topics, speaker, Common Ground
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Left-peripheral topics
  • 3.Left vs. Right Dislocation
    • 3.1On the syntactic analysis of Right Dislocation
  • 4.Types of topics and discourse properties
  • 5.Dislocations, Familiarity, and the speaker’s perspective
    • 5.1Dislocations
    • 5.2Left vs. Right Dislocation
  • 6.German “familiar” particles doch and ja and their Italian counterparts
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 08 May 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.260.03car
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