Chapter published in:
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14: Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY
Edited by Lori Repetti and Francisco Ordóñez
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14] 2018
► pp. 201–213

Chapter 11
Bridging and dislocation in Catalan

| Universitat Pompeu Fabra
| Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The exact anaphoric relation between the referent of dislocates and their previous discourse referents has been a matter of much discussion. In this paper, we reexamine this relation under the light of Clark’s notion of bridging (Clark 1977), and connect different anaphoric bridging types with left (LD) and right dislocations (RD) in Catalan. We report a judgment task experiment showing that while speakers clearly perceive LD and RD as different for most kinds of bridging, they rate RD better across the board, suggesting that speakers can use RD for a wider range of uses than previously assumed. Yet, albeit the preference for RD in Catalan, LD seems to be inherently linked to contrastive readings.

Keywords: bridging, left dislocation, right dislocation, anaphora, contrast, Catalan
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Bridging
    • 2.2Left and right dislocation
  • 3.Testing bridging and dislocation
    • 3.1Experimental design
    • 3.2Predictions
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Descriptive statistics
    • 4.2Significance tests
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 August 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.14.11may
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Cited by 1 other publications

Brunetti, Lisa, Laia Mayol & Xavier Villalba
2020. Bridging Strength, Monotonicity, and Word Order Choices in Catalan. Discourse Processes 57:8 ► pp. 703 ff. Crossref logo

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