Left and Right Dislocation of the G-Topic

English Dislocation of constituents

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: excellent, Università degli Studi Roma Tre (University), course: Applied Linguistics, language: English, abstract: In English, the lowest position of the Topic in CP does not appear to be available for left realizations of the G-Topic. The reason for such unavailability remains unexplained. What is known, however, is that there are no recognized cases of the G-Topic dislocated on the left. In spite of this, the present analysis will lead us to maintain that, even in this language, left dislocation of the G-Topic is present, but depends on 'particular structural conditions of the CP' and on the uniqueness of such a Topic as the only element in CP that can occupy the functional projection of TopP. This paper is divided into three main sections: in § 2, we will present an introduction to the notion of Topic and to other notions considered important to understand subjects in question. In § 3, we will explain in detail our aforementioned hypothesis; finally, in § 4, we will discuss right dislocations of the G-Topic and, in particular, the so-called 'accented' Topic.