Right Peripheral Fragments

In recent years, a number of authors (De Vries 2009, Truckenbrodt 2015, Ott and de Vries 2016, inter alia) have defended that right dislocations (RD) should be treated as bisentential structures, where the “dislocated” constituent is actually a remnant of a clausal ellipsis operation licensed under identity with an antecedent clause. Although Romance RD is a fertile area of research, the consequences of the biclausal analysis remain unexplored in these languages. This monograph intends to fill this gap. Adopting this approach not only solves some issues that have always been at the core of dislocation structures in general; it also allows us to uncover novel sets of data and to provide straightforward explanations for well-known generalizations. Further, it brings RD along with a set of phenomena which are structurally very similar, like afterthoughts or split questions, which have been independently argued to display a bisentential structure. Under alternative, monoclausal approaches to RD, the striking similarities between these phenomena must be rendered anecdotal.

Morgane Jourdain, KU Leuven, on Linguist List 32.787, 2021:
This monograph will be of high interest to researchers investigating generative syntax, especially those interested in the phenomena related to the peripheries, as this book provides a particularly interesting angle of analysis. The overview of the monoclausal approaches to RD seems quite complete, and exhaustive enough for readers who are less acquainted with dislocation to be able to follow the explanations and arguments for or against each approach. The number of examples throughout the book is also quite impressive, and really allows the reader to understand each point of the argumentation, even though in some instances, the author could have included more explanation on how the example illustrates the argument put forward. Nevertheless, the content of this book is still accessible and easy to read.