Left-Dislocation in Comedy (with an Appendix on Lucretius)

Abstract

Left-dislocation in comedy is by far the largest group in the corpus, consisting altogether of 77 examples. It is also the most varied in all respects, especially concerning the range of possible case combinations between the dislocated element, the relative pronoun and resumption in the main clause. Almost all the examples are from Plautus. Only five of the 77 examples of left-dislocation come from Terence (table 5). The majority of the 77 instances contain a relative clause (67 examples). There are ten examples without a relative clause, all of which come from Plautus.