Let's clear up a few things here -- the original sentence under 
discussion was precisely the kind Bob and I have been talking about. I 
don't have it exactly, but the name appeared first:

"In Hrothgar's speech to Beowulf, he ... "

I objected only to the repeition of reference to Hrothgar, once via 
proper name and again via pronoun. I have no objection to introductory 
adverbials; they are fine orienters and feature in good writing.

My main objection is stylistic -- as Bob notes, I doubt such structures 
appear much in mature writing. Novice writers spread info over excess 
syntactic units in other ways, too. However, there is a slight 
possibility of confusion, depending on context. The "he" might refer to 
a person mentioned in the speech; the proximity of male-marked 
"Beowulf" might also distract the rapidly-processing brain as it seeks 
antecedents for "he" (let's not forget that nouns nearer the verb than 
the "simple subject" are the prime culprits in subject-verb agreement 
errors). The context is not forgiving in the student examples I have 
seen. If it were, as I have said before, I would not even notice the 
structure as infelicitous.

As to topic-comment, this terminology appears in some writing manuals 
with reference to structures such as "My father, he seldom votes". They 
are labeled outright ungrammatical, which I find a little extreme. I 
view the Beowulf example as similar. Topic-comment syntax is standard 
in some languages. A rough example I recall from my 
structure-of-Chinese course is "Elephant, nose is long", which would be 
translated as "Elephants have long noses". I can imagine a novice 
writer writing something like "As far as elephants, they have long 
noses".

Considering introductory adverbials "topical" is not standard in 
discussions of syntax or writing, so far as I know. They are seen as 
orienting devices, and also can be connectors to what went before.

I occasionally have students in my 300-level class who have never had 
to write a term paper before. In the main, those who have written 
papers have not been well-trained, or perhaps not held to high 
standards. A large number of them are going to be teaching writing, if 
they obtain their teaching credentials. Unfortunately, my class is not 
a writing class. It is a content class, and the students hand in a 
final draft of their term papers. For this reason, I advise them on how 
to check their papers for aspects of mature style before handing them 
in. I also urge them to use our writing lab and provide a list of 
typical problems.

Lastly, with tongue in cheek and apologies to Bill McCleary, an 
illustration of how the structures under discussion slip into 
less-formal writing ...

" For students who have not written a term paper before, they are 
overwhelmed."

: )

Johanna Rubba, Assoc. Prof., Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93047
Tel. 805.756.2184
Dept. Tel. 805.756.6374
Home page:
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba

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