Castiglione, Stefano;
(2024)
A Biclausal Analysis of Italian Right Dislocation.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Preview |
Text
Thesis_Main_File 1 Nov 2024.pdf - Accepted Version Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
In this thesis, I examine the properties of Italian Right Dislocation, a construction in which a constituent that co-refers with a pronominal antecedent generally occurs at the right edge of a clause. Following recent literature, I propose that Right Dislocation should be analysed as a biclausal construction, in which the antecedent occurs in one clause and the dislocated element occurs in a second clause, semantically equivalent to the first but subject to ellipsis. I provide evidence from binding, showing that a biclausal analysis can account for a whole set of binding patterns, while existing monoclausal analyses fall short of predicting the observed patterns. Having established that Right Dislocation is a fragment, I argue, based on a number of properties such as island sensitivity and certain interpretive properties, that right-dislocated elements undergo movement to the left edge of the clause they belong to, before ellipsis takes place. I show that analyses in which the dislocated element remains in situ cannot adequately explain all properties of right-dislocated elements. Finally, while I adopt the increasingly accepted view that discourse factors are relevant in explaining where right-dislocated elements - as well as other fragments - can appear, I argue that the distribution of dislocated elements in a variety of contexts is determined by the interplay between a discourse-governing principle, A’-movement, and considerations about the size of the ellipsis site. Thus, I show that Right Dislocation is a complex phenomenon, but it can be reduced to a parenthetical insofar as it is syntactically independent from the clause containing the pronominal antecedent while still integrated in production based on phonosyntactic constraints. The overall implication is that Right Dislocation is not a primitive of the theory of linguistic competence; rather, it emerges out of independent factors.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | A Biclausal Analysis of Italian Right Dislocation |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10199482 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
