Propositions disloquées dans le français parlé

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a corpus-based analysis of clausal dislocation in spoken French. Two major types of structure are examined: clausal left dislocation and clausal right dislocation. We argue that clausal left dislocation is a topic-marking dislocation construction, as its pragmatic and prosodic features are comparable to those of noun phrase left dislocation. This does not always hold true of clausal right dislocation, because the distinction between clausal right dislocation and extraposition is often problematic, especially when spontaneous speech data are examined.