Hanging Topic Left Dislocations as extrasentential constituents: toward a paratactic account. Evidence from English and Spanish

Abstract The paper argues for a bisentential, paratactic account of Hanging Topic Left Dislocations wherein the syntactically unconnected hanging topic phrase is the remnant of an elliptical copulative sentence which is linearly juxtaposed to the second, host sentence. This proposal represents a natural extension of Ott’s system for Clitic Left Dislocations and predicative non-restrictive nominal appositives. By assuming that the hanging topic is structurally disconnected from the host sentence, the analysis constitutes a radical departure from integrated/monosentential approaches within cartography, which analyze hanging topics as intrasentential, albeit peripheral, constituents in the left spine of the clause. Using data from English and Spanish as well as from other linguistic varieties, the paratactic approach provides a principled account of various issues facing monosentential analyses of hanging topics, including anti-connectivity, coreference with the resumptive/epithetic correlate, comma intonation/pause potential, case, insensitivity to locality constraints, islandhood, and potential presence of interjections between hanging topic and host sentence, amongst others. The account is also successful in capturing orphaned topics, which are not linked to any constituent in the sentence they occur with, alongside ‘interrogative’ and hyperdetached hanging topics.