La voz

Rizzi’s (1997) left periphery provides a template within which to see LD.

TopicP is a ‘higher’ predication, above IP*: rather than being interpreted on the basis of è roles, checked by a regular lexical–predicative head, the topic and comment in SpecTopicP and CompTopicP in (92) are interpreted on the basis of the pragmatic roles they play, encoded as features checked against TopicE. In (83a) the LDed phrase is the subject Jean, resumed by the clitic il. Given the analysis of subject proforms in §4.4.4, Jean can’t occupy the canonical subject position because this position is occupied by the subject proform (prior to phonological cliticisation onto I*E). Instead, the LDed phrase occupies a specifier position outside IP*, namely, (Spec)TopicP with the comment in complement position:

(92) TopicP 3 topic TopicN

Jean 3

TopicE comment il m’aime bien

A number of facts suggest that LD is the output of Merge rather than the result of movement of the topic out of the comment (pace De Cat 2002). First, the comment is always syntactically well formed even without the LDed topic. This suggests that the comment is a grammatically complete constituent, in a way that constituents containing an antecedentless trace are not. Second, the characteristic prosody of LD isn’t found in any clear case of movement. T hird, the comment typically contains a resumptive clitic (provided one exists) corresponding to the LDed topic. If LD were the result of M ove, this would mean there were two overt realisations of the same underlying constituent within IP* which would be surprising since the relevant varieties of French aren’t characterised by clitic doubling. Fourth, the dependency between the LDed phrase and any plausible antecedent within the (relevant) comment isn’t subject to the constraints on movement found elsewhere: not only is it unbounded (unlike head movement), it can also cross an island (unlike wh movement). In (93a) the LDed topic is resumed by a clitic in the subordinate clause; in (93b) it’s resumed within a relative clause:

(93) a. Moi, [il faut [que j’aille en ville]].

me it is-necessary that I-go to town

‘I need to go to town.’

b. Jean, [le jour [où il ne sera pas en retard] sera un jour de fête]!

J. the day where he NEG will.be not in late will.be a day of celebration

‘The day J. isn’t late will be a day of celebration.’

Fifth, the nature of the correspondence between the LDed phrase and the resumptive proform in the comment is flexible. Thus, while in (83) and (84), the match is perfect – LDed subject resumed by subject proform, LDed object resumed by object proform – in (94) it isn’t:

A hanging topic is a discourse rather than sentence topic.

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Ayres-Bennett and Carruthers (2001: 268, following Deulofeu 1977) call these ‘binary

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constructions’. They’re ‘very informal’ according to Gadet (1997).

Note, though, that, unlike LDed argumental/stage topics, hanging (discourse) topics can’t

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iterate, must precede argumental/stage topics, and are restricted to pre-matrix-clause position. Thus, they may well occupy a specifier position in the left clause periphery which is even higher than (Spec)TopicP.

(94) a. Jean, je lui ai donné €20.

J. I to.him have given €20

‘I gave J. €20.’

b. Tout le monde, le soir de la fête, on était tous fatigués.

all the world the evening of the party one was all tired

‘On the evening of the party, everyone was tired.’

In (94a) the LDed phrase is resumed by an indirect-object clitic, but isn’t itself marked as an indirect object with à; in (94b) the LDed phrase is resumed by on

‘one’. Further cases of flexibility are illustrated in (95):

(95) a. Ce métier | on se déplace tous les jours.

this job one self moves all the days

‘In this job you’re on the move every day.’

b. Le même argent | on peut payer un loyer.

the same money one can pay a rent

‘At that price you can afford to pay rent.’

The vertical line splits these sentences into two halves which are syntactically independent and only vaguely semantically related. There’s no resumptive clitic.

The first half is called a hanging topic, the relationship between the two, ‘loose⁴² aboutness’. Intonation rises on the hanging topic, then falls on the rest of the⁴³ sentence, as in LD, suggesting a parallel analysis. Given that it’s difficult to see⁴⁴ what kind of strictly syntactic relationship the hanging topic might have with the rest of the clause, an extraction analysis is implausible, suggesting that we have a base-generated topic–comment articulation. Given the parallel with regular LD, a non-extraction analysis of LD is suggested, too. I conclude therefore that LD is a base-generated configuration rather than the result of movement. Zubizarreta (2001:

184) talks about LD involving its own predicate–argument structure: rather than being merged within the lexical VP* and subsequently raised, the dislocated phrase is, instead, merged outside the core clause as the ‘subject’ of the higher predication;

from this position it binds an argument variable within the core clause.

To account for the fact that LD isn’t restricted to a single clause-initial topic, Rizzi (1997) claims that TopicP can iterate and that, in principle, there’s no limit to the number of topics that can be LDed. In (84a) there are two LDed topics and each is resumed within IP*. Consider, though, the multiple LD in (96):

(96) Moi, mon frère, sa femme, [elle est malade]. (after Yaguello 2003b: 220) me, my brother, his wife, she is ill

‘My brother’s wife is ill.’

The multiple LD in (96) differs from (84a) in that the last of the three LDed topics alone is resumed within the bracketed IP*. However, this difference is only significant if we assume that resumption is required within IP*. Note that there’s nothing in the topic–comment articulation in (92) which assigns any particular status to IP*; the comment is simply whatever occupies CompTopicP, and this doesn’t have to be IP*. Assuming iterability of TopicP, in cases of multiple LD like (96), the comment in all but the lowest topic–comment articulation is itself a further topic–comment articulation. Thus, what’s relevant is whether or not each successive topic is resumed within its particular comment. And, as shown in the representation of (96) in (97), this is indeed the case:

(97) Topic1P

ei

topic Topic1N

g 3

Moi Topic1Ei comment g Topic2P wo

topic Topic2N

g 3

i j

[mon frère] Topic2E comment g Topic3P wo

topic Topic3N

g 3

j k

[sa femme] Topic3E comment g IP*

6 elle est maladek

In the highest topic–comment articulation, Topic1P, the topic moi ‘me’ is resumed by the possessive determiner within mon frère ‘my brother’, contained within the relevant comment, T opic2P, the complement of Topic1E; in Topic2P, mon frère is resumed by the possessive determiner within sa femme ‘his wife’, contained within Topic3P; finally, sa femme is resumed by elle ‘she’, the subject of the core clause.

Thus, just as in (84a), each LDed topic in (96) is resumed within the relevant comment (even if this isn’t necessarily IP*).

The order in which topics are resumed within the comment has no impact on the

This observation it a further reason to reject the extraction analysis of LD.

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order in which they are LDed (contra Larsson 1979). However, the inherently⁴⁵ hierarchical model of LD in (97) means that the linear order of LDed phrases does determine their relative topichood. W hile moi, mon frère and sa femme in (96)/(97) are all topics within their own topic–comment articulation, they don’t all have the same pragmatic status relative to one another; there’s a left-to-right pecking order, which reflects the structural hierarchy of shifting topics: within the context of the entire utterance moi is more topical than sa femme. Such an approach suggests that the multiple LD in (84a) is similarly hierarchical: that is, rather than being two randomly ordered topics of equal standing, Jean is more topical than Marie, as a simple consequence of the correspondence between linear order (of LDed topics) and hierarchical pragmatic structure. Similarly, while (98a, b) are truth-condition-ally equivalent, (98a) doesn’t correspond pragmatictruth-condition-ally to (98b):

(98) a. Jean, Marie, il la voit demain. b. Marie, Jean, il la voit demain.

J. M. he her sees tomorrow M. J. he her sees tomorrow

‘J.’s seeing M. tomorrow.’ • (98a)

The sentences in (98a, b) are formally identical apart from the relative order of the LDed phrases: both are topics, but the topichood of the leftmost LDed phrase is greater than that of the rightmost. Thus, topichood is a relative or scalar notion, rather than a categorical one.

Topic1P i Topic2P j IP* i j

(99) a. [ [Jean] Topic1E [ [Marie] Topic2E [ il la voit demain]]] (98a)

Topic1P j Topic2P i IP* i j

b. [ [Marie] Topic1E [ [Jean] Topic2E [ il la voit demain]]] (98b)