As a grammatical structure, “He seldom votes, my father” is referred to in the syntax literature as “right dislocation”, assuming a transformational derivation moving the subject to the end and leaving behind a resumptive pronoun. The dislocated subject is topical, not focus, even though it comes at the end, as can be seen from its intonation. The tonic accent of the sentence will be on either SELdom or VOTES, but both “he” and “my father” will be unstressed and low pitched, at least in a declarative sentence. The sentence would be very odd with “he” stressed and only a bit less odd with “my father” stressed, although a context demanding that isn’t hard to devise. Rhetorically, I think right dislocation acts as a sort of discourse repair mechanism, and so it’ll be found much more frequently in extemporaneous speech than in writing.
Herb
From:
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 10:22 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Syntax question
ATEGers,
It occurred to me again last July during the Wimbledon Tennis matches how often the commentators would use what might be a comment-topic arrangement. Instead of "My father, he seldom votes" they would say, "He seldom votes, my father." This structure is surprisingly common, "He has a wicked backhand, McEnroe." Does it make sense to call this a "comment-topic style"? Or is this just a question of putting the topic-comment in the reverse order, so that what would normally be a comment has become the topic? Is it significant that it is commentators that are doing this?
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 10/30/2005 9:16:38 PM >>>
Topic-comment terminology and concepts come out of several strands of functional linguistic analysis, starting at least with early Halliday work and probably going back farther than that. Topic has been discussed extensively in connection with definitions of subjecthood. The Chinese example that Johanna gave is an example why linguists argue that Chinese is a topic-comment language rather than a subject-predicate language. Topic comes initially in a sentence, but there is no other grammatical or morphological marking of subjecthood in Chinese. In English, subjects are usually topics, but we have structures, like some of those under discussion in this thread, which allow us to make something else topic. We also have sentences that start with subjects that aren't topics, like
It's raining.
It looks like UCLA will win the PAC-10.
There's an elephant behind that tree.
Typically such sentences are used to introduce new content (focus) at the end of the sentence that then becomes the topic of the discourse.
"Topical" refers usually to nominal structures in a sentence that are neither topic nor focus, have been previously mentioned or are in some other way salient, and are not in topic or focus position. In the sequence
I just talked to Mary. John gave her a ring. It had a fake stone.
"Mary" is in focus. "John" is topic. "her" is topical, and "a ring" is in focus. "It" is topic, and "a fake stone" is in focus, so it might well become the subject of the next sentence.
Topic continuity and the given-new contract are concepts that can be very useful in the teaching of writing because they name crucial elements of discourse structure.
Herb
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Sun 10/30/2005 9:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Syntax question
Johanna is right. I didn't know that the reduntant pronoun was called "topic-comment" (it sounds like an odd term to me), but it seems to me that it can be very effective rhythmically. Labelling it as ungrammatical in all cases does seem extreme.
It occurs in French, too. I think it's a song by Edith Piaf that has the line, "Quand j'ai fame, moi j'ai le pain." It's a downright beautiful line!
Paul D.
Johanna Rubba <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
..........
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".
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