Left-dislocation Construction In English: A Functional Approach

This dissertation explores the pragmatic use of left dislocation (LD) as a construction. Construction is a grammatical category that distinguishes one special linguistic sequencing from another at the syntactic level. Though construction is an abstract notion, it may be treated and studied as any of the linguistic signs for it can also be interpreted in terms of its relations and differences with other constructions as any typical sign. The LD construction can thus be studied as regards its paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations with other constructions. In practice linguists can delve into the functions/meanings of the signs from their distinctive forms, or vice versa. This dissertation is a study starting from the form toward the function. We believe that it is the special form of the LD construction that leads to its particular function(s). We'll also analyze the pragmatic rules or motivations lying behind the special functions of the LD construction in terms of Verschueren's pragmatic perspective, believing that the special form of it is the result of the speaker's adaptation to the context through negotiation with the hearer.This paper is an integrated study, involving semiotics, general linguistics, transformational-generative grammar, functional grammar, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. The methodology includes qualitative study and quantitative study, as well as critical analysis with examples. Based on Saussure's semiotics and Croft and Cruse's description of the construction, the study gropes into the paradigmatic and syntagmatic features of the LD construction. Namely, paradigmatically, the LD construction will be compared with other similar constructions in terms of the distinctive features of its syntactic, prosodic, semantic, topical or informative aspects; syntagmatically, its relationship with what goes before or after will be analysed in terms of its topicality and anaphoricity. However, the language users'effort does not only lie in these two levels. Their negotiation with each other should also be taken into consideration. Thus we have three levels to work with, each of which cannot do without the language users'interaction.