Dislocation (syntax)
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In syntax, dislocation is a sentence structure in which a constituent which could otherwise be either an argument or an adjunct of the clause occurs outside the clause boundaries either to its left or to its right as in English They went to the store, Mary and Peter.
The dislocated element is often separated by a pause (comma in writing) from the rest of the sentence. Its place within the clause is often occupied by a pronoun (e.g. they).
There are two types of dislocation: right dislocation, in which the constituent is postponed (as in the above example), or a left dislocation, in which it is advanced. Right dislocation often occurs with a clarifying afterthought: They went to the store is a coherent sentence, but Mary and Peter is added afterward to clarify exactly who they is. By contrast, left dislocation is like clefting: it can be used to emphasize or define a topic. For example, the sentence This little girl, the dog bit her has the same meaning as The dog bit this little girl but it emphasizes that the little girl (and not the dog) is the topic of interest; one might expect the next sentence to be She needs to see a doctor, rather than It needs to be leashed. This type of dislocation is a feature of topic-prominent languages.
Basis
The basis of dislocation gets its roots from Latin. In Latin, the verb always has a subject ending at the end to indicate the number and point of view. For example, the word laborare (to work) does not have any meaning in English, as it lacks the point of view. However, a conjugated (and correct) form would be laborat, which means he works. Thus, even if there was already a subject, then the "verb-subject" would still apply. For example, Marcellus laborat would mean "Marcellus, he worked". Thus, most other languages, except English, actually use Dislocation as a form of correct grammar. The reason that English does not employ it is due to the fact that it has influence from the ancient Germanic language, which did not use Dislocation.
Dislocation in French
Informal spoken French uses right dislocation very naturally and extensively, to detach semantic information from the grammatical information. Whereas a French news article would likely translate The dog bit the little girl as Le chien a mordu la petite fille (lit. "The dog has bitten the little girl"), in everyday speech one might hear Il l'a mordue, le chien, la petite fille (lit. "It her has bitten, the dog, the little girl"), in which both le chien ("the dog") and la petite fille ("the little girl") have been dislocated to the right and replaced by pronouns within the clause. This phenomenon was first studied in French by linguist Joseph Vendryes.
It has been proposed that informal spoken French can be analyzed as having polypersonal agreement; that is, the various (mostly clitic) pronouns surrounding the verb can be viewed as inflections on the verb that agree in person, number, and sometimes gender with its various arguments.
Author Raymond Queneau, whose favourite example of dislocation in French was Il l'a-t-il jamais attrapé, le gendarme, son voleur ? ("Has he ever caught him, the policeman, his thief?"), has been inspired to write many articles such as Connaissez-vous le Chinook ? ("Do you know Chinookan?"). According to Queneau, right dislocation in Chinookan is commonplace.
Dislocation in Cantonese
Colloquial Cantonese often uses right dislocation when afterthoughts occur after completing a sentence.[1] Because it is a pro-drop language, no pronoun is used when a subject is dislocated, leading to an appearance of changed word order. For instance, the normal word order is subject verb object (SVO):
- 王生 返 咗 屋企 。
Mr. Wong returned home.
Dislocation can result in the appearance of verb object subject (VOS) word order because no pronoun is used:
- 返 咗 屋企 喇 ， 王生 。
[He] returned home, Mr. Wong.
At a deep level though, the sentence is still SVO but only appears to be VOS due to dislocation and pronoun dropping. Often a sentence-final particle (SFP) is required after the main clause, otherwise the sentence would sound strange or unacceptable. Right dislocation in Cantonese can occur with auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and sometimes subordinate clauses in addition to subjects.[1]
Being a Chinese language, Cantonese is also a topic-prominent language and thus features left dislocation.[1] For instance:
- 王生 已經 買 咗 奶 。
Mr. Wong already bought the milk.
Topicalization can make this sentence appear to be object subject verb (OSV):
- 奶 王生 已經 買 咗 。
[As for] the milk, Mr. Wong already bought [it].
Both left and right dislocation can even be featured in the same sentence:
- 奶 已經 買 咗 喇 ， 王生 。
[As for] the milk, [he] already bought [it], Mr. Wong.
References
- Lambrecht, Knud. 2001. "Dislocation". In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible, eds., Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook. (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, 20). Vol. 2, 1050-1078. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.