Re: Topicalization

"myname" <lslfkjs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:47e9fd51$0$888$ba4acef3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

. . . I showed a few people (including you) ten sentences
asking whether they were grammatically correct or not.

Everybody agreed this one was NOT correct:

1) Two first class honors Carl wants among his senior sophister students
this year

A sentence requires a subject and main verb; (an object
is optional.) Therefore if you call this a sentence its
structure is:
CARL (subject) WANTS (verb) HONORS (object)
and its style is inverted. English expects Subject,
Verb and Object to appear in this order. The model
sentence presents: Object, Subject, Verb.

Our question is why? Inversion is used in poetry
and oral oratory, for special emphasis or other rhetorical
reasons. No such reasons are obvious here.

But then I heard of "Topicalization" (aka Topic fronting aka Left
dislocation) :
- Most rap, I enjoy
- That car, I would like to own
- That, I'm not sure about
- That kind, I kind of enjoy

"Topicalization" may be a nonce coinage. It appears
functionally no different from Inversion (explained above.)

Considering this (and adding a comma), wouldn't sentence 1 be "correct" ?
(again, it's all about grammar, not about style...)

No, you are wrong. Inversion is a feature style, not
grammar. The normal rules of grammar are just the
same whether we write
Carl wants honors
or
Honors, Carl wants.
We may describe Case 2 as Inversion (the standard
label) or Topicalization (as you propose) but this description
has no bearing on grammar. Its presence or absence does
not change the rules of grammar.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)



.

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