Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

NSLs are not dislocated must admit that they can be. So a simple sentence like:
(2) En Joan no ha vingut
The J. not has come
would be ambiguous between the dislocation and Spec of AGR status of en Joan. More or less
explicitly, many authors have contended this ambiguity is only apparent: the dislocation version
would imply both a phonological pattern (usually a rise-and-fall intonation) separating the
preverbal subject from the rest of the sentence, and a special interpretation by which the
preverbal subject is read as 'as for Joan' or something similar.
It is true that there may be a phonological clue for dislocated elements. What is not true,
at least in Romance, is that the it is obligatory: any clitic left-dislocated (CLLD) element can be
pronounced without any special pause or phonological clue possibly differentiating it from what
would be a 'true' non-dislocated subject. Here are some examples CLLD (and the pattern
generalizes to any CLLD element and to any Romance language as far as I know), where no
pause or phonological clue obligatorily indicates dislocation: 150
(3) a. A en Joan li han robat la cartera
To the J. him-have robbed the wallet
'They stole the wallet from Joan'
b. Amb ell no hi parlo
With him not there-speak-I
'To him, I never talk'
150 Normative grammarians do not like dislocation in formal
speech, especially in written formal speech. Liberal ones, they
allow it only in informal speech, and then a comma should be
used. This might be at the origin of the belief on the existence
of the pause that has gone unchallenged by many linguists.
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