The Pragmatics of Left Detachment in Spoken Standard French

The Pragmatics of Left Detachment in Spoken Standard French Synopsis

Left detachment constructions (LDs) (e.g. un buffet de campagne, c'est un meuble ) are examined in a corpus of informal spontaneous conversation between educated native speakers of French. The overwhelming majority of these constructions are shown to have a clearly pragmatic motivation. The author's observations support a view of LD in French as a particular type of paratactic structure which should be seen primarily as a feature of unplanned discourse. The analysis partly builds on views expressed by Knud Lambrecht in an earlier contribution tot this series.