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In:On Spoken French: An Ashby Reader
William J. Ashby
[Studies in Language Companion Series 226] 2023
► pp. 207–248

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The syntax, pragmatics, and sociolinguistics of left- and right-dislocations in French

 | University of California, Santa Barbara
Published online: 2 March 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.226.c18
Aspects of the syntax, pragmatics and sociolinguistic distribution of left- and right-dislocations in a corpus of spoken French are treated. Most tokens of both types have clear pragmatic motivation, two functions being common to both, with other functions particular to one or another type. The social distribution of weakly motivated tokens does not support the view that, as French moves toward verb-initial typology, dislocated subjects are being grammaticalized as ordinary subjects.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Syntax of left- and right-dislocations
  • 3.Discourse status
  • 4.Pragmatic functions of left- and of right-dislocations
  • 5.Dislocations with weak pragmatic motivation
  • 6.Summary and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Editor’s/translator’s references
  • Appendix
References (40)
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