Part of
Anaphors in Text: Cognitive, formal and applied approaches to anaphoric referenceEdited by Monika Schwarz-Friesel, Manfred Consten and Mareile Knees
[Studies in Language Companion Series 86] 2007
► pp. 165–182
I argue that the so-called ‚German right dislocation’ in fact comprises two formally and functionally distinct constructions, which I label right dislocation proper and afterthought. The main focus of the paper lies on right dislocation proper (RD) and its discourse function. I show, that RD is used as a discourse-structuring device. RD marks the referent of the right-dislocated noun phrase as the discourse topic for the following discourse segment. This explains certain anaphoric constraints on the following discourse segment. Thus, the corresponding referent has to be anaphorically resumed as sentence topic of the corresponding sentence at the level of the ‘main structure’ (i.e., the main story line).