Left dislocation in main and subordinate clauses

Left dislocation is a common feature in the Nordic languages. In main clauses, a lexical noun phrase is positioned in a dislocated position in the left periphery, while a pronoun occurs in the clause-internal, prefield position, i.e., in the position preceding the finite verb. This is described by Faarlund et al (1997:904-5) for Norwegian, Teleman et al (1999 4:440–447) for Swedish and Hansen and Heltoft (2011:1828) for Danish.


Introduction
Left dislocation is a common feature in the Nordic languages.In main clauses, a lexical noun phrase is positioned in a dislocated position in the left periphery, while a pronoun occurs in the clause-internal, prefield position, i.e., in the position preceding the finite verb.This is described by Faarlund et al (1997:904-5) for Norwegian, Teleman et al (1999 4:440-447) for Swedish and Hansen andHeltoft (2011:1828) for Danish.

Johan he is good comic sometimes
'Johan is very comic sometimes.'(Teleman et al 1999 4:440) In Danish, this type of left dislocation can also occur in subordinate clauses -the "neutral sentence model", according to Hansen andHeltoft (2011:1828).They say that the subject can be extraposed so that it occurs just after the subjunction and before the subject position.This is exemplified in (4). (

Nordic Syntax Database
Since it is generally acknowledged that left dislocation in main clauses exists in all the Nordic languages, this was not tested in the ScanDiaSyn survey.However, left dislocation in subordinate clauses was tested.Sentence The maps show very clear results.In Norwegian and Swedish, independently of dialect, a lexical noun phrase in the subject position of the subordinate clause is fine.However, there is no place for a dislocated phrase to its left.
The survey was not performed in Denmark, nor in Iceland or the Faroe Islands.I will supplement the survey with data from the Nordic Dialect Corpus.

Introduction
Hansen and Heltoft (2011) give examples of left dislocation in subordinate clauses, as we saw in section 1.They say nothing, however, about the frequency of dislocated structures, or about any dialectal differences.Jørgensen (2008:2.3),however, in a web-based information site for dialectologists, says about the West Jutlandic dialects that those sentences where the constituent in the prefield is purely pronominal seem most natural.If a heavier constituent is desired at the front, it should be put in the extraposition and be repeated pronominally. 1Jørgensen   (2000:105) takes a broader view, and says about spoken language generally that the prefield does not accept anything but pronouns, and that sentences without left dislocation (but with a lexical noun phrase) would sound artificial in informal speech.Hansen (1967) also mentions such constructions.We will take a closer look at Danish first, and then the other Nordic languages.

Danish
For the topic in this paper, it is vital to be able to test natural, spoken data.that this construction can indeed be found in Danish; there are 36 proper hits (after irrelevant hits have been removed).The hits are from all over Denmark, so there seems to be no dialectal differences here.The for that people they will shop there 'in order that people will want to shop there.

( 8 )
containing a sentence with left dislocation in a subordinate polarity question clause, and (9) containing a subordinate clause with a lexical noun as subject were tested in Norway and Sweden.The results are shown bus.DEF it stops before motorway.DEFHe wanted know whether bus.DEF stops before motorway.DEF 'He wanted to know if the bus stops before the motor way.' Map 1: Left dislocation in subordinate clauses.(#272: Han ville vite om bussen den stopper før motorvegen.'He wanted to know if the bus stops before the motorway.')(black= low score) Lexical items in the prefield position in subordinate clauses.(#1203: Han ville vite om bussen stopper før motorvegen.'He wanted to know if the bus stops before the motorway.')(White=high score; black = low score) construction has been found in Århus, AErø, Als, Bornholm, Falster, Fyn, Harboøre, Copenhagen, North Jutland, East Jutland, Sevel, Zealand, Spjald, Thorminde and West Jutland (the areas mentioned -Jutland and Zealandrepresent individual places not further specified in the national Danish DanDiaSyn project; many of the other places in the list are also in Jutland and Zealand).In (10) I present some examples of the subordinate left dislocation.(10) a. Når mor hun var faerdig med at vaske op (Danish)when mother she was finished with to wash up 'When mother had finished doing the washing up.' Hansen and Dialect Corpus is very useful for this purpose, since it contains a lot of informal dialogue, and since it is grammatically tagged and easy to search in.Starting with Denmark, I will test constructions left dislocation as well as lexical items in the prefield in both main and subordinate clauses.I start with testingHansen and Heltoft's (2011:1828)claim that left dislocation can occur in subordinate clauses.This is interesting because the Syntax Database reveals that this construction is rejected in Swedish and Norwegian.The corpus is morphologically tagged, but not syntactically, so I have chosen not to look for complex noun phrases, but only simple nouns.A basic search for subjunction + noun + pronoun should give us examples of the desired construction, if it exists.The results of the search show Jørgensen (2000 and2008)n, left dislocation in subordinate clauses in Danish.There are hits from all across the country.It is also important to point out that it seems that any kind of subjunction can introduce the subordinate clause.This is surprising given that main clause word order in subordinate clauses is usually restricted to clauses introduced by at/att 'that'.This is very different from the situation in some of the other Nordic languages, as we shall see below.WhileHansen and Heltoft (2011)say nothing about the frequency of the left dislocation,Jørgensen (2000 and2008)says that it would sound artificial not to have left dislocation.However, a search for subjunction + noun + verbi.e., for subordinate clauses without left dislocationyield 83 proper hits (as against 36 with dislocation).This means that there are more hits without than with dislocation, thus showing a result somewhat different from Jørgensen's claims.Again, the examples are from all over Denmark: Århus, AErø, Als,Bornholm, Falster, Fyn, København, North Jutland, East Jutland, Sevel, Zealand, Thorsminde, West Jutland.Iprovide two examples of subordinate clauses without left dislocation: '...that the women stood in the door and cried.' (sjaelland6)