Part of
Explorations in English Historical SyntaxEdited by Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet, Liesbet Heyvaert and Charlotte Maekelberghe
[Studies in Language Companion Series 198] 2018
► pp. 203–234
This paper investigates the diachronic development of strings that include both a left-dislocated constituent and a coreferring resumptive in the subsequent clause, thus resembling the reportedly speech-like and informal contemporary Left Dislocation construction. The data is analyzed according to a range of factors relating to the inner configuration of such strings and examined by means of the pertinent statistical tests. The purpose is to arrive at a clearer and broader picture of (i) the general decline of left-dislocated strings, (ii) the factors determining their structural complexity, and (iii) their role as prospective markers of orality in Modern English speech-related texts.