Table Of ContentMATERIALS ON LEFT DISLOCATION
LINGUISTIK AKTUELL
This series provides a platform for studies in the syntax,
semantics, and pragmatics of the Germanic languages
and their historical developments.
The focus of the series is represented by its German title
Linguistik Aktuell (Linguistics Today).
Texts in the series are in English.
Series Editor
Werner Abraham
Germanistisch Instituut
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26
9712 EK Groningen
The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected]
Advisory Editorial Board
Guglielmo Cinque (University of Venice)
Günther Grewendorf (J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt)
Liliane Haegeman (University of Geneva)
Hubert Haider (University of Stuttgart)
Christer Platzack (University of Lund)
Ian Roberts (University of Stuttgart)
Ken Safir (Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ)
Höskuldur Thráinsson (University of Iceland, Reykjavik)
Lisa deMena Travis (McGill University)
Sten Vikner (University of Stuttgart)
Volume 14
Elena Anagnostopoulou, Henk van Riemsijk and Frans Zwarts (eds)
Materials on Left Dislocation
MATERIALS
ON LEFT
DISLOCATION
Edited by
ELENA ANAGNOSTOPOULOU
University of Tilburg
HENK VAN RIEMSDIJK
University of Tilburg
FRANS ZWARTS
University of Groningen
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Materials on left dislocation / edited by Elena Anagnostopoulou, Henk van Riemsdijk, Frans
Zwarts
p. cm. -- (Linguistik aktuell = Linguistics today, ISSN 0166-0829; v. 14)
Includes examples in various languages.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Syntax. 2. Generative grammar. I.
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. II. Riemsdijk, Henk C. van. III. Zwarts, Frans. IV. Series:
Linguistik aktuell ; Bd. 14.
P291.M35 1997
415--dc21 97-4489
ISBN 90 272 2755 7 (Eur.) / 1-55619-233-9 (US) (Hb; alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1997 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Preface
In the spring of 1974, two o fus, Frans Zwarts and Henk van Riemsdijk, spent
a research semester at MIT with a grant from the Fulbright Hays Program.
Among the results of that stay was a joint paper on Left Dislocation. At the
time, the pressure to publish in the Netherlands was negligible and the paper
was never published. For an unpublished paper, it received a great deal of
attention and is still regularly cited. This fact, along with a desire to celebrate
the twentieth birthday of that stay in the United States, which was memorable
in many more ways, led to the idea to organize a small workshop on Left
Dislocation. The workshop was held at Tilburg University on May 28, 1994.
What is true of the VanR iemsdijk & Zwarts paper is true of several other early
generative studies on left dislocation phenomena. Since no book exclusively
dedicated to the Left Dislocation construction had been published, the idea
arose to put together a collection consisting on the one hand of some of these
early and often quite inaccessible texts, and on the other hand of a number of
contemporaneous studies, most of them presented at the workshop. This con
ception, then, resulted in the structure of the present volume: after an introduc
tory article by Van Riemsdijk, there are two parts: Part I 'Basic Texts' and Part
II 'Current Developments.'
In Part I, the aforementioned paper by VanR iemsdijk & Zwarts is published
for the first time. This text is followed by Robert Rodman's article 'On Left
Dislocation' which was originally published in the now defunct Papers in
Linguistics 7, 437-466 in 1974. We thank the author for his permission to
reprint the article here. The next article, Hirschbühler's 'On the Source of
Lefthand NP's in French' appeared in Linguistic Inquiry 6, 155-165 in 1975. We
acknowledge the permission by MIT Press to reprint the paper here. A further
paper from the early period, 'Left dislocation, Connectedness and Reconstruc-
tion' by Jan Vat (a collective name standing forM ariette van Geijn-Brouwers,
Ton van Haaften, Jos ten Hacken, Fred Landman, Ieke Moerdijk, Henk van
Riemsdijk and Rik Smits) was originally published in the working papers
volume Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik (GAGL) 20, 80-103
in 1981. We gratefully acknowledge the permission by Werner Abraham to
reprint this article. Cinque's article 'Topic Constructions in Some European
Languages and Connectedness' originally appeared as a 1983 Tilburg University
internal publication, edited by K Ehlich and H.C. vanR iemsdijk and entitled
vi
Connectedness in Sentence Text and Discourse. The last text in this first part
is called 'Contrastive Left Dislocation and Movement,' was written by Annie
Zaenen, and was never published before.
Part II contains, for the most part, a selection of the papers presented in 1994
at the Tilburg workshop, in particular the papers by Elena Anagnostopoulou,
Maria-Angeles Escobar, Hanneke van Hoof, and Martina Wiltschko. To these
papers, a further article by Hamida Demirdache, which was completed around
the same time, was added.
We would like to thank the authors of the older texts for their collaboration in
making the present (re-)printings possible, as well as the contributors and
participants of the 1994 workshop. It is the atmosphere they created and the
enthusiasm they expressed which ultimately made the present volume possible.
Thanks are due, finally, to Conchita Zerrouk for helping to organize the work
shop, to Christine Erb and Ildikó Tóth for helping with the index, and to
Gwen Perret for her editorial assistance.
Elena Anagnostopoulou (Tilburg University)
Henk van Riemsdijk (Tilburg University)
Frans Zwarts (University of Groningen)
MATERIALS ON LEFT DISLOCATION
Editors: Elena Anagnostopoulou (Tilburg University)
Henk van Riemsdijk (Tilburg University)
Frans Zwarts (University of Groningen)
Page
Contents
Preface v
Henk van Riemsdijk:
Left Dislocation 1
Part I: Basic Texts
Henk van Riemsdijk & Frans Zwarts:
Left Dislocation in Dutch and Status of Copying Rules 13
Robert Rodman:
On Left Dislocation 31
Paul Hirschbühler:
On the Source of Lefthand NPs in French 55
Jan Vat:
Left Dislocation, Connectedness and Reconstruction 67
Guglielmo Cinque:
Topic' Constructions in some European Languages and 'Connectedness' 93
Annie Zaenen:
Contrastive Dislocation in Dutch and Icelandic 119
viii
Part II: Current Developments
Elena Anagnostopoulou:
Clitic Left Dislocation and Contrastive Left Dislocation 151
Hamida Demirdache:
Dislocation, Resumption and Weakest Crossover 193
Linda Escobar:
Clitic Left Dislocation and other Relatives 233
Hanneke van Hoof:
Left Dislocation and Split Topics in Brabant Dutch 275
Martina Wiltschko:
Parasitic Operators in German Left-Dislocation 307
Index 341
Left Dislocation
Henk van Riemsdijk
Tilburg University
1. Some early history
The first authoritative description of the construction called Left Dislocation
and its properties within the framework of generative grammar is, as is the case
with so many constructions, due to Ross (1967/1986). The name of the con
struction is credited by Ross to Maurice Gross. The first number of years after
Ross' dissertation the main focus of the work in syntactic theory was on the
battle with Generative Semantics and on developing Ross' program of establi
shing a series of constraints on syntactic rules. This line of research, which
culminated in the Conditions on Transformations theory of Chomsky (1973)
was mainly concerned with the 'major' syntactic operations o fwh-movement,
passive, raising, reflexivization etc. The topic of Left Dislocation was revived
in 1974 with papers by Paul Hirschbiihler and by Frans Zwarts an dmyself.
Since then, there has been a steady trickle of papers aiming at establishing a
typology of rather diverse subtypes of Left Dislocation. Some of the main
contributions from this tradition, many of which are either unpublished or diffi
cult to access, are incorporated into the present volume together with a number
of new analyses and proposals.
One of the main distinctions introduced in Ross' dissertation was that be
tween what he called chopping rules and copying rules. Chopping rules are
those that are subject to Ross' constraints on variables (the Complex Noun
Phrase Constraint (CNPC), the Sentential Subject Constraint (CSC) and the
Coordinate Structure Constraint (CSC)), copying rules are those that are not.
Left Dislocation is a prime example of a copying rule. It contrasts systematical
ly with its chopping counterpart Topicalization. The following examples illus
trate this contrast.1
(1) a. My father, I hardly ever see him and my mother when they are not glaring at
each other. (LD: no CSC violation)
b. *My father, I hardly ever see [e] and my mother when they are not glaring at
each other. (Topicalization: CSC violation)
2 HENK VAN RIEMSDIJK
(2) a. My father, the man he works with in Boston is going to tell the police that
that traffic expert has set that traffic light on the corner of Murk Street far too
slow. (LD: no CNPC violation)
b. *My father, the man [e] works with in Boston is going to tell the police that
that traffic expert has set that traffic light on the corner of Murk Street far too
slow.(Topicalization: CNPC violation)
(3) a. My father, that he's lived here all his life is well-known to the cops. (LD: no
SSC violation)
b. *My father, that [e] has lived here all his life is well-known to the cops. (LD:
no SSC violation2)
Another property of Left Dislocation, as Ross notices, is that it occurs in main
clauses only. Emonds was soon to exploit this property in establishing the class
of root transformations in his (1970) typology of transformations.3
(4) a. *That my father, he's lived here all his life is well known to those cops
b. *That beans he likes is now obvious
The contrasts Ross noted between LD and Topicalization were remarkable
because both were thought to be movement rules, the only difference being that
Topicalization leaves nothing behind in the source position (given that traces
have not been introduced yet) and that Topicalization leaves a pronominal copy
of the moved NP behind. This minimal difference between the two rules is
illustrated in their formulation:
(5) a. Topicalization b. Left Dislocation
X -NP -Y X -NP - Y
1 2 3 opt⇒ 1 2 3 opt⇒
2#[1 0 3] 2#[1 2+Pro 3]
The renewed interest in Left Dislocation originated with a reconsideration of
the existence of copying rules of this type.
2. Against a copying analysis
One of the results of the debates between Generative Semantics and Interpretive
Semantics of the late sixties and early seventies was the abandonment of the
idea that pronouns, reflexives and other anaphoric elements are introduced
transformationally as replacements of the corresponding full Nps. Instead, it
was assumed (and still is) that these elements are inserted directly from the
