Topicalization vs. Left Dislocation of Sentential Arguments in German
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper defends the thesis that in German all sentential arguments occurring in sentenceinitial position have undergone obligatory left dislocation. This implies that the Vorfeld is unable to be occupied by sentential arguments. The resumptive pronoun that immediately follows the left-dislocated phrase may be deleted in accordance with the conditions on Topic Drop that hold for German (cf. Oppenrieder 1991). The analysis, which is formulated in the framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar, accounts for the absence of sentential arguments in the Vorfeld as well as several related phenomena.
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