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Part of
Perspectives on Linguistic Structure and Context: Studies in honor of Knud Lambrecht
Edited by Stacey Katz Bourns and Lindsy L. Myers
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 244] 2014
► pp. 223–240

Left dislocation in French

Information structure vs. (?) interactional linguistics

A number of studies of Left Dislocation (LD) in spoken French within the Interactional Linguistics (IL) framework (de Fornel 1988; Pekarek Doehler 2001; Chevalier 2011b) have been critical of the information-structure analyses of this construction as set forth in Lambrecht (1981, 1994) and Barnes (1985). This discussion attempts to clarify the original information-structure analysis, arguing that the pragmatic definition of LD should be limited to the explicit marking of the sentence-topic and its associated comment. This topic-comment configuration is compatible with a large variety of particular functions with respect to the larger discourse and to speakers’ interactional purposes. Explanatorily useful IL analyses are those that make clear the connection between the topic-comment configuration and the proposed interactional function.

Published online: 5 March 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.244.11ker
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Shibasaki, Reijirou
2018. Chapter 11. Sequentiality and the emergence of new constructions. In Explorations in English Historical Syntax [Studies in Language Companion Series, 198], ► pp. 283 ff. DOI logo
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