Review of Downing (2003): Tematización en el español hablado

Abstract

Early studies in thematisation -most commonly dubbed "left-dislocation" or "left detachment" -focused on the semantic and formal aspects of the construction (see, for example, Rodman 1974; Ross 1967). Subsequent investigations, however, explored its functional load and informational make-up across different languages and text types, producing diverse and occasionally contradictory results (see, for example, in English, Despite its frequency, especially in spoken language, thematisation in Spanish has received comparatively little attention, with most studies concentrating on focality but giving disparate accounts of the informative and discourse implications of the construction, whether approached from formal (D'Bearing this situation in mind, Hidalgo Downing's (2003) book, Tematización en el español hablado (TEH henceforth), is really welcome, for it offers a perspicuous investigation that attains the goals it sets for itself (TEH: 25-26): (i) to define and delimit the functional and formal features of thematisation, as in, Ese hombre, ¿es amigo tuyo? (TEH: 10) in natural spoken Spanish, based on evidence provided by two corpora, Corpus oral de referencia del español contemporáneo and El habla culta de la ciudad de Madrid; (ii) to determine the informative dimension of the construction, that is, to assess the informative status of the thematised constituent; and (iii) simultaneously, to evaluate its interactive dimension, or its involvement in Theme (dis)continuity strategies and turn-taking systems, and their side-effects in conversational coherence (cf. Goutsos 1997).TEH is composed of six chapters: the first three provide the theoretical framework for the study, while the remaining three present the findings of the investigation.