This article proposes a novel analysis of contrastive left-dislocation (CLD), according to which the left-dislocated XP is a remnant of clausal ellipsis. This analysis makes sense of the otherwise paradoxical fact that the dislocated XP shows connectivity into the clause it precedes, while other properties betray its clause-external status. The paradox is resolved by analyzing CLD as a juxtaposition of two parallel clauses, the first of which is reduced by deletion at PF. Akin to recent treatments of sluicing, fragment answers, split questions, and other phenomena, the analysis reduces CLD to an interplay of Ā-movement and ellipsis, thereby removing constructional residue from the theory of Universal Grammar.

This paper proposes a crosslinguistically uniform analysis of Left-dislocation constructions, according to which left-dislocated XPs are elliptical sentence fragments surfacing in linear juxtaposition to their host clause. The analysis is shown to provide a principled solution to Cinque's Paradox: dislocated XPs are extra-sentential constituents akin to parentheticals while behaving in certain respects as having moved to their surface position from within the host clause, in apparent violation of the boundaries of "sentence grammar" as typically defined. The solution in terms of deletion and endorphoric linkage undermines templatic analyses of the 'cartographic' tradition, showing that in at least some cases the "sentential periphery" reflects not syntactic composition but juxtaposition in discourse.

While the left clausal periphery has been in the center of attention of syntactic theory since the 1970s, the right periphery remains comparatively ill-understood. The goal of this paper is to rectify this situation. We argue that Germanic right-dislocation constructions are composed of two juxtaposed clauses, the dislocated peripheral XP being a remnant of ellipsis in the second clause. This analysis explains the extrasentential status of right-dislocated constituents while simultaneously accounting for signs of syntactic connectivity. These two seemingly conflicting facets are reconciled in a manner familiar from deletion-based accounts of sluicing and fragment answers, i.e. by attributing the relevant (apparent) grammatical interactions to parallel but silent clausal structure. We show that this analysis successfully derives the core properties of both backgrounded and focused ('afterthought') phrases at the right periphery, whereas monosentential movement or base-generation accounts necessarily fall short of accounting for the observed facts. The analysis not only eliminates a putative case of rightward movement, but shows that right-dislocation can be fully understood in terms of independently motivated computations, thereby removing constructional residue from the theory of Universal Grammar.

This paper investigates the internal and external syntax of non-restrictive nominal appositives (NAPs), such as John Smith in I met an old friend, John Smith, at the pub. It is shown that the internal constitution of NAPs bears directly on the analysis of the irrelation to the surrounding host sentence, in that a rich internal syntax obviates the need for any direct syntactic connection between host and NAP. It is shown that NAPs are structurally independent sentence fragments that can be freely employed either sequentially (as 'afterthoughts') or as interpolated, supplemental speech acts, autonomous from the host in prosody, interpretation, and syntax. The analysis renders superfluous powerful extensions of core syntax/semantics proposed in previous work to capture the syntactic properties of NAPs and other parentheticals, concluding instead that NAPs warrant no enrichment of UG.

In this paper, I argue against the standard analysis of so‐called split topics in German as discontinuous noun phrases (van Riemsdijk 1989). Building in part on Fanselow 1988, I show that the construction rather involves two morphosyntactically autonomous nominal constituents that are predicatively related in underlying form. This predication is syntactically unstable, however. Merge of two XPs within a single argument or adjunct position yields a symmetric structure for which no label (“head”) can be detected by Minimal Search (“for any syntactic object {α,β},α is the head if α is a lexical item”; see Chomsky 2008). Therefore, one of the two noun phrases must move at the phase level in order to render the structure asymmetric; in case the stranded noun phrase is elliptical, the impression of a discontinuous constituent arises. By providing a principled explanation for split topicalization in these terms, the analysis furnishes evidence for an architecture in which Merge applies freely (pace recent claims to the contrary, e.g., in Kayne 2010), and as an asymmetrizing device when applying internally (as movement), in the spirit of Moro 2000 and Chomsky 2013.