Left- and Right-Dislocation and the speaker’s perspective

In Italian, topics may appear in left- or right-dislocated position and are doubled by clause-internal clitic pronouns. In this paper, the syntax and the contribution to discourse of left- and right-dislocated topics are discussed. We will focus on Familiar Topics, the only type of topics which can appear in either position. On the one hand, it is shown that Familiar Topics do not only involve the retrieval of given information, as is currently assumed, but also contribute to the conversational dynamics by adding the speaker’s perspective on shared information. On the other hand, it is shown that left and right-dislocated topics have different properties, confirming that Left Dislocation is not the mirror image of Right Dislocation. The discussion will also include the comparison between Italian Left and Right Dislocation and German sentences with modal particles.