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

In fact, the non-dislocated versions of the above examples would be slightly unnatural as
an answer to 'What's happening?' (they would be certainly acceptable in literary speech, for they
would be the outputs of the avoid-dislocation correction effort 151 ).
We must point out the in 0 the CLLD element is human and definite. These factors are
clearly relevant. So the following examples would not be appropriate replies to 'What's
happening?':
(5) a. Una sargantana, l'he vista al jardí
A lizard it-have-I seen in-the garden
'One (of the) lizard(s), I saw in the garden'
b. De lingüística, en parlarem després
Of linguistics of-it-will-we-talk later
'Linguistics, we'll talk about later'
But about the same happens with preverbal subjects, as the following are not appropriate
replies either (perhaps they can be felt as more acceptable than the preceding because of
normative pressure for SV(O) word order):
151 There is a long tradition in traditional grammars stating
that SVO is the unmarked word-order, and it is a dearly
recommended one when the grammar is prescriptive. This partly
can be traced back to the XVIIIth century belief that French was
the language of reason, because, among other trifles, it had the
virtue of systematically expressing the 'natural order of
thoughts' (i.e. 'agent-action-object') properly (i.e. SVO). If
this sheer nonsense deserves any theoretical attention it is
precisely a warning against being misled by it as far as it has
become 'common sense' belief among literate people that SVO is
the unmarked order.
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