A Study Of Left Dislocation In Light Of Adaptation Theory

Left Dislocation is a syntactic structure resulting from moving acomponent of a sentence to the left and leaving a copy in its originallocation in the sentence. But such a movement is not a simple movement ofsentence components and many pragmatic and cognitive motivations behindsuch movement deserve special attention.So far, many insightful investigations have been made into LeftDislocation, but most of these studies focus on information structure andfunctions of LD, neglecting pragmatic motivations behind the application ofsuch construction. This paper analyzes the pragmatic motivation lyingbehind Left Dislocation in terms of Verschueren's Adaptation Theory,arguing that the choice of such a special linguistic form in communication isthe result of the speakers'adaptation to both the linguistic andcommunicative contexts through negotiation with the hearers.On the one hand, Left Dislocation construction adapts to the linguisticcontext to achieve cohesion, because the arrangement of informationstructure and thematic structure of Left Dislocation can help achievecohesion in some way. On the other hand, Left Dislocation adapts to thecommunicative context, especially the mental world and the social world toensure better communication effects. In fact, Left Dislocation can serve as auseful communicative strategy.The analysis of Left Dislocation in the light of Verschueren'sAdaptation Theory offers both theoretical and practical implications.