dislocations content - length : 4400 - - - - - - - - - - forwarded message - - - - - - - - - - date mon , 19 jun 1995 08 : 10 : 48 - 0400 > from aaa552 @ agora . ulaval . ca subject / graviton / einstein / aaa552 / mail / bb i posted a week ago a query on the topic of dislocation . i wanted to know whether just any of the phenomena known by the name of dislocation implies coreference . the responses to the posting indicated that the word dislocation is by and large used to refer to a phrase p adjoined to a sentence s where p holds a coreference relationship with a pronoun included in s . so there seems to exist a terminological consensus on this notion ( although for some dislocation covers topicalization ) . here is a very slightly edited summary of responses . many thanks to all those whose responded . i hope this is useful . pierre larrivee . w . croft @ manchester . ac . uk ( bill croft ) : i think you will have to define " dislocation " to get a useful answer from your query - - - in particular , define it in such a way that the coreference relation does not follow by definition . if " dislocation " means what the etymology suggests , then it involves movement of an element out of its canonical position ; if you allow coreference to phonologically null elements ( left in canonical position ) , then by definition a dislocated element will have a coreference relation to an element in the sentence to which it is adjoined , namely to the null or non-null element it has " left behind " . if you do not allow coreference to phonologically null elements , then the english construction called " topicalization " or " y - movement " is a counterexample to the generalization you are inquiring about . if you define " dislocation " in a non-movement fashion - - - i . e . as some element ( an np ? ) adjoined to a sentential constituent - - - then japanese , chinese and other e asian languages ' topic constructions will be a counter - example , since the " topic " np need not be an argument or even an adjunct of the sentence to which it is adjoined . to this comment of mine : it seems to me that topicalization is a somewhat different phenomena from dislocation , is it not ? cf . the prosody ( no pause for topics ) and the lack ( in general ) of a resumptive pronoun ( chocolate cake i like ( * it ) ) . w . croft added : prosody would be an interesting start on a definition of dislocation that does n't presuppose coreference - - - i think the resumptive pronoun part is more problematic , since specifying the form of a resumptive form would presuppose coreference . > from holleb @ linguist . umass . edu ( ? ? bart holle ) at the moment i am working on right dislocation , mainly in dutch . and as far as i can tell there are no counterexamples . the moment there is no reference to an element in the " main " clause it is clearly extraposition . a main difference for dutch is that you can extract out of an extraposed phrase , whereas you cannot out of right dislocated one . > from sophie . kern @ mrash . fr ( sophie kern ) i ' m actually writting my thesis about the development of narrative competence by french monolingual children ( 3 to 11 years old using ) a picture book task . one of the domain i ' m studying is the reference to the main or other characters of the story , and particulierly what kind of linguistic devices the children use to maintain or to switch reference in subject position i found a lot of left and right dislocations . > from larry horn ( lhorn @ yalevm . cis . yale . edu ) you might want to check out an old paper by robert rodman on topicalization and ld in a journal called papers in linguistics . i think it was 1973 . he talks about sentences like : as for noxious odors , my sheepdog farts after eating escargots . in which the sentence is a comment on the topic in the " ld " phrase , but no coreference per se obtains . > from barrett @ zelig . cs . nyu . edu ( leslie barrett ) there 's an article by bowers in li ( 1993 ) that mainly concerns predication but mentions coreference possibilities in fronted vps like the following : criticize himself , i think john never will i i ) from luge . latrobe . edu . au ( hussein shokouhi ) ronald geluykens has extensively worked on this issue in english . he has published a book in 1992 under the title of ' from grammar to discourse : left-dislocated construction ' . knud lambrescht has also done something on french . he has also published a book on french discourse and syntax in 1994 . surely , you can find a good number of references in those two books .