draft of November 2011

1 Introduction
Clitic Left Dislocation (clld) is standardly assumed as the main topic-strategy in Italian and
Greek (Cinque 1990; Anagnostopoulou 1994; Rizzi 1997; Tsimpli 1995). On a par with English
Topicalisation, the (A ′ ) topic-operator involved in clld is analysed as anaphoric in the sense
of Lasnik and Stowell (1991); rather than binding a variable (like a quantificational operator),
is linked anaphorically to the in-situ element of the dependency, through co-reference. The
pronominal in clld is often analysed as an overt counterpart of the gap element in Topical-
isation (Rizzi 1997; Tsimpli 1999). The crosslinguistic variation then is confined to PF, the
choice between a pronominal element and a gap (null epithet for Lasnik and Stowell 1991).
Under this view, crosslinguistic variation is primarily related to the nature of the operator,
anaphoric vs. quantificational while variation in the nature of the in-situ element has been
much less in focus. Current assumptions make the prediction that the range of intepretations
available for Topicalisation should be available for clld structures; in addition, no variation
is expected within clld since, ultimately, the involvement of the pronominal is taken as a PF
realisation of the gap involved in Topicalisation. 1
Indeed, clld-ed indefinites in Italian allow both the de re (wide scope) reading in (1a) as
well as a de dicto reading, as indicated by the continuations in (1b) and (1c). If clld involves
movement just like Topicalisation, then the indefinite in (1a) should reconstruct under the
scope of the intensional predicate.
(1) a. una gonna rossa la cerco da un po’
a red skirt her.cl look-for-1sg for a while
A red skirt I’ve been looking for a while...
b. ma non ne ho trovata nessuna che mi piaccia
but not of-them.cl have-1sg found none-fem that me please-3sg.subj
... but have not found anyone that I like.
c. ma non riesco a ricordarmi dove l’ho
messa
but not reach-1sg to remember where her.cl-have-1sg put
puffle ... but I cannot remember where I’ve put it.
1 To be precise, Lasnik and Stowell (1991) argue that the gap element in Topicalisation is a null epithet rather
than a variable. The fact remains that the pronominals in clld should allow the same range of interpretations
as the null epithet in Topicalisation.
3