Connectivity in left-dislocation and the composition of the left periphery

Abstract

This paper proposes a crosslinguistically uniform analysis of Left-dislocation constructions, according to which left-dislocated XPs are elliptical sentence fragments surfacing in linear juxtaposition to their host clause. The analysis is shown to provide a principled solution to Cinque's Paradox: dislocated XPs are extra-sentential constituents akin to parentheticals while behaving in certain respects as having moved to their surface position from within the host clause, in apparent violation of the boundaries of "sentence grammar" as typically defined. The solution in terms of deletion and endorphoric linkage undermines templatic analyses of the 'cartographic' tradition, showing that in at least some cases the "sentential periphery" reflects not syntactic composition but juxtaposition in discourse.

Recomplementation in English and Spanish: Delineating the CP space

“…The prospect that a single complementizer may serve more than one function in the same realization is independently corroborated by the following data, where the same que complementizer realizes more than one single function. Suppose that speaker A utters (90) 39 This is compatible with the proposal made by Ott (2015) that CLLD involves two clauses, with the dislocate being a fragment under ellipsis that is linearly juxtaposed to the host clause (i.e., Creo que no lo llamo a Pedro, que no lo llamo -'I believe that Peter, that I won't call him'). However, the reader should note that Ott (2015) puts aside embedded clauses.…”

“…Suppose that speaker A utters (90) 39 This is compatible with the proposal made by Ott (2015) that CLLD involves two clauses, with the dislocate being a fragment under ellipsis that is linearly juxtaposed to the host clause (i.e., Creo que no lo llamo a Pedro, que no lo llamo -'I believe that Peter, that I won't call him'). However, the reader should note that Ott (2015) puts aside embedded clauses. At any rate, if this biclausal analysis is extended to recomplementation, then the discourse-marking function of double that/que becomes even more obvious: the reduplicative complementizer serves the role of linking the two clauses, precisely as would be expected if it can act as a discourse marker.…”

Els fenòmens discursius com una finestra a les interfícies

“…In this paper, I only deal with foci, but topics present intonational phrase boundaries (Astruc 2004; Feldhausen 2010, a.o.). See Ott (2015) for a non-cartographic analysis of topics that is consistent with their prosodic behaviour.…”

Information structure and its syntactic manifestation in Spanish: facts and proposals

“…With the exception of those that propose that topic movement is obtained by conjoining sentences and applying ellipsis to the identical material (cf. Ott 2011see Ortega-Santos 2016 for yet another view, where items displaced can land in a right branch), it is fair to say that the general consensus at this point is that CLRDs involve movement to a relatively high position, followed by remnant movement of a constituent containing the verbal complex. The issue that is most debated right now is the nature of the position to which CLRDs move, and specifically whether it is below or above TP.…”