Re: "Tagalog, it's got a Trigger System," She Said (was; QUESTION-New project)

On Mon, 15 Feb 1999 10:36:20 -0800 Matt Pearson <mpearson@...>
writes:
>Steg Belsky wrote:
>> I speak like that in English normally, and people around me do
>> too.....is
>> it known whether this kind of construction, like "my mother, she
>told me
>> to go to the store" is regional (NYC?) or ethnic (Jewish?), because
>as
>> far as i know, it's grammatically incorrect, even though i hear it
>> around
>> here all the time, and my brother said that he doesn't think people
>in other areas use this construction.
>> The type of construction, specifically, is where a pronoun
>> representing
>> the subject of the sentence is placed into a sentence where the
>> subject
>> is already specified, e.g.:
>> My brother, he told me people in other places don't talk like this.
>> His friend Ari, she lives in Jersey.
>> Those stupid tourists, they clog up the subways.
>> The computer, it broke.
>There's nothing remotely strange or 'grammatically incorrect' about
>this
>construction at all.  It even has a name among linguists: "Left
>Dislocation"
>(viz. moving one of the verb's arguments to the left edge of the
>clause
>and 'replacing' it with the appropriate pronoun).  French and Italian
>also have this construction, although in those languages the left-
>dislocated element is replaced with a clitic or 'light' pronoun rather
>than a full stressed pronoun.
>
>English, French, and Italian also have Right Dislocation:
>
>    I love him, that man of mine
>    I've never met him before, that crazy brother of yours
>
>Somehow, these sound best to me when the right dislocated
>element is introduced by a demonstrative like "that".  It sounds
>strange to say "I've never met him before, your brother", unless
>"your brother" is being added as an afterthought.
>
>In French you even find multiple left- and right-dislocations
>in the same sentence, producing things like "Your brother,
>has he read it, that book?".
>
>Matt.
>
Ah, cool....i feel so much more secure in my usage now :) .


-Stephen (Steg)

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