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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2023
Edited by Sterre Leufkens and Marco Bril
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 40] 2023
► pp. 88–104

Left dislocation in Dutch

A narrative elicitation study

| Leiden University
| University of Groningen
Left Dislocation in Dutch is still poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear why speakers of Dutch use this construction and which factors influence its use. To obtain more insight in the function and use of Left Dislocation in Dutch, we elicited narratives from 30 adult speakers of Dutch and carried out an analysis of the use of Left Dislocation constructions in these narratives. Our analysis revealed that neither the introduction of new referents, nor the expression of a contrast between two referents, nor the marking of a shifted topic is able to explain all uses of Left Dislocation in these narratives. We speculate that the function of Left Dislocation in Dutch is to mark a referent as a potential topic for the further discourse.
Keywords: contrast, discourse topic, Dutch, narratives, pronouns
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Left Dislocation in English
    • 2.2Left Dislocation in Dutch
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Design and materials
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Data analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Introduction of a new referent
    • 5.2Marking of contrast
    • 5.3Marking of a shifted topic
    • 5.4General discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 3 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00081.van
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