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11.3.3.Topicalization

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This section discusses topicalization, the phenomenon that in main clauses virtually any clausal constituent (and sometimes also parts thereof) may precede the finite verb in second position, subsection I starts by showing that, as in the case of question formation, the moved constituent can have a wide range of syntactic functions and can be of any category, subsection II continues by comparing topicalization to question formation (as well as relativization) in order to motivate the claim that it is derived by wh-movement; we will see that, apart from the fact that topicalization is a root phenomenon, there are indeed compelling reasons to assume wh-movement to be involved in the derivation, subsection III repeats some arguments from Section 9.3 for rejecting the traditional view that subject-initial sentences are necessarily derived by topicalization; exclusion of such sentences from the set of topicalization constructions will lead to the conclusion that such constructions have two characteristic properties: they exhibit subject-verb inversion and have a non-neutral reading, subsection IV explores the latter issue, and will show that topicalized phrases often play a special role in discourse; they express a contrastive focus, act as a topic, or perform a special function in the organization of the discourse. Given this, we may expect for contrastively focused phrases and topics at least that wh-movement may pied-pipe a larger phrase if syntactic restrictions prohibits extraction and subsection V shows that this expectation is indeed borne out, subsection VI continues with a discussion of topicalization of clauses and smaller verbal projections: such cases are special because wh-movement of such constituents is not possible in the case of question formation and relativization, subsection VII concludes with a comparison of topicalization in Dutch and English, and will show that there are a number of conspicuous differences, which raises the question as to whether the two should be considered phenomena of the same kind.

I. Syntactic function and categorial status of the topicalized element
II. Topicalization is a subcase of wh-movement
III. Subject-initial clauses versus topicalization constructions
IV. Information structure: focus and topic
V. Pied piping and stranding
VI. Topicalization of verbal projections
VII. Some differences between English and Dutch topicalization

[+] I. Syntactic function and categorial status of the topicalized element

The traditional generative analysis holds that main clauses are derived by placing the finite verb in the second position of the clauses, the so-called C-position in (285), followed by topicalization of some constituent into the so-called clause-initial position, the specifier of CP; see Section 11.1 for details.

285

There seem to be virtually no restrictions on the syntactic function or the categorial status of the topicalized element. The examples in (286) start by showing this for nominal arguments: subjects, direct and indirect objects are all possible in sentence-initial position.

286

a.	Marie/Ze	heeft	haar broer/hem	die baan	aangeboden.	subject
	Marie/she	has	her brother/him	that job	prt.-offered
	'Marie/She has offered her brother/him that job.'

b.	Die baan	heeft	ze	her brother/him	aangeboden.	direct object
	that job	has	she	her brother/him	prt.-offered
	'That job, she has offered [to] her brother/him.'

c.	Haarbroer/Hem	heeft	ze	die baan	aangeboden.	indirect object
	her brother/him	has	she	that job	prt.-offered
	'Her brother/Him, she has offered that job.'

There are, however, two important differences between subject-initial sentences and sentences with an object in first position. First, clause-initial objects can be considered to be semantically marked in that they act as discourse topics or contrastive foci, or have some other special function in the organization of the discourse, while this does not necessarily hold for clause-initial subjects. Second, topicalized objects are often characterized by a special intonation pattern: the objects in (286b&c), but not the clause-initial subjects in (286a), must be accented, as is clear from the fact the latter but not the former can be a reduced pronoun. This suggests that subject-initial sentences may also be syntactically different from constructions with topicalized objects; we will return to this issue in Subsection III.
Next, the examples in (287) show that it is also possible to topicalize prepositional objects: (287a) illustrates this for a prepositional indirect object and (287b) for the prepositional object of kijken (naar)'to look (at)'.

287

a.	Aan haarbroer/Hem	heeft	ze	die baan	aangeboden.	indirect object
	to her brother/him	has	she	that job	prt.-offered
	'His her brother/him, she has offered that job to.'

b.	Naar dat huis	staat	Jan al	een uur te kijken.	prepositional object
	at that house	stands	Jan already	an hour to look
	'That house, Jan has been staring at for an hour.'

Complementives can also be topicalized: we illustrate this in (288) by means of three examples with complementives of a different categorial status; they show that noun phrases, APs and PPs can all be topicalized.

288

a.	Een liefhebber van Jazz	ben	ik	niet	echt.	nominal
	a devotee of jazz	am	I	not	really
	'A devotee of jazz, I am not really.'

b.	Aardig	is de nieuwe directeur	beslist.	adjectival
	nice	is the new director	definitely
	'Nice, the new director definitely is.'

c.	In de la	heb	ik	de schaar	gelegd.	adpositional
	into the drawer	have	I	the scissors	put
	'In the drawer, I have put the scissors.'

Adjuncts can also be topicalized. Example (289a) shows this for supplementives and examples (289b&c) for adverbial phrases. Observe that we did not mark the adverbial phrases for accent; assigning accent is possible but does not seem to be necessary. We will return to this issue in Subsection IV.

289

a.	Kwaad	liep	hij	weg.	supplementive
	angry	walked	he	away
	'Angry, he walked away.'

b.	Op zolder	slapen	de kinderen.	place adverbial
	on attic	sleep	the children
	'In the attic, the children sleep/are sleeping.'

c.	Na de vergadering	vertrekken	we.	time adverbial
	after the meeting	leave	we
	'After the meeting, we will leave.'

The discussion above has shown that topicalization is like wh-question formation in that constituents with various syntactic functions (argument, complementive and adjunct) and of various different forms (noun phrase, AP and PP) can be moved into sentential-initial position. Topicalization differs from wh-movement, however, in that it also allows preposing of clauses; this is illustrated in (290) for a finite clause. We return to topicalization of clauses in Subsection VI. Accent can be assigned at various places within the preposed clause.

290

a.	Ik	verwacht	niet	[dat	hij	dat boek	wil	hebben].
	I	expect	not	that	he	that book	wants	have
	'I don't expect that he wants to have that book.'

[Dat hij dat boek wil hebben] verwacht ik niet.

The examples in (291) show that it is also possible to topicalize the complement of perfect and passive auxiliaries, a phenomenon known as VP-topicalization. The (a)-examples show that topicalization of the participle is possible both with and without the direct object; the (b)-examples show that subjects are normally not affected. VP-topicalization will also be discussed in Subsection VI. Accent will normally be assigned to the object if it is pied piped by VP-topicalization.

291

a.	Ze	hebben	mijn huis	nog	niet	geschilderd.	perfect
	they	have	my house	yet	not	painted
	'They haven't painted my house yet.'

a'.

[<Mijn huis> geschilderd] hebben ze <mijn huis> nog niet.

b.	Mijn huis	wordt	volgend jaar	geschilderd.	passive
	my house	be	next year	painted
	'My house will be painted next year.'

b'.

Geschilderd wordt mijn huis volgend jaar.

[+] II. Topicalization is a subcase of wh-movement

Topicalization involves movement of some constituent into the initial position of the main clause. It resembles the formation of wh-questions in that the movement targets the position immediately preceding the finite verb; this is illustrated again in the (b)-examples in (292). This observation is not trivial; this does not hold for a language like English. We return to this in Subsection VII.

292

a.	Jan	heeft	gisteren	dat boek	gelezen.
	Jan	has	yesterday	that book	read
	'Jan read that book yesterday.'

b.	Welk boeki	heeft	Jan gisteren ti	gelezen?	wh-question
	which book	has	Jan yesterday	read
	'Which book did Jan read yesterday?'

b'.	Dat boeki	heeft	Jan gisteren ti	gelezen.	topicalization
	that book	has	Jan yesterday	read
	'That book, Jan read yesterday.'

The (b)-examples in (293) show that topicalization differs from question formation (and relativization) in that it is a root phenomenon. It cannot apply in embedded clauses.

293

a.	Marie zei	[dat	Jan	dat boek	gelezen	heeft].
	Marie said	that	Jan	that book	read	has
	'Marie said that Jan has read that book.'

b.	Marie vroeg	[welk boeki	Jan ti	gelezen	heeft].	wh-question
	Marie asked	which book	Jan	read	has
	'Marie asked which book Jan has read.'

b'.	*	Marie zei	[dat boeki	Jan ti	gelezen	heeft].	topicalization
		Marie said	that book	Jan	read	has

There is no way in which embedded topicalization in examples such as (293b') can be improved. The examples in (294), for instance, show that Dutch does not have the option found in German to have topicalization in embedded clauses with verb-second, as embedded verb-second is categorically prohibited in Dutch. We refer the reader to Haider (1985/2010) and Barbiers (2005: Section 1.3.1.8) for a discussion of embedded verb-second in, respectively, German and a number of non-standard varieties of Dutch; the German example in (294a) is taken from Müller (1998:42) in a slightly adapted from.

294

a.	Marie	sagte	[dieses Buchi	habeconjunctive	sie ti	bereits	gelesen].	German
	Marie	said	this book	has	she	already	read
	'Marie said that this book, she had already read.'

b.	*	Marie	zei	[dit boeki	had	ze ti	al	gelezen].	Dutch
		Marie	said	this book	had	she	already	read

The examples in (294) also show that embedded topicalization cannot occur with a phonetically expressed complementizer, unlike what is the case in English examples such as (295a); cf., e.g., Chomsky (1977), Baltin (1982) and Lasnik & Saito (1992). Since there is no a priori reason to think that Dutch topicalization targets a different position than English topicalization, we have added example (295b'), in which the complementizer dat'that' precedes the topicalized phrase.

295

Marie thinks [that this booki you should read ti ].

English

b.	*	Marie denkt	[dit boeki	dat	je	zou ti	moeten	lezen].	Dutch
		Marie thinks	this book	that	you	would	must	read

b'.	*	Marie denkt	[dat	dit boeki	je ti	zou	moeten	lezen].	Dutch
		Marie thinks	that	this book	you	would	must	read

Examples (296a&b) show that topicalization is like question formation in that it allows long wh-movement if a bridge verb such as denken'to think' is present. It should be noted, however, that long topicalization is like relativization in that it is possible with a wider range of verbs than question formation; cf. Schippers (2012:105). For instance, the factive verb weten'to know' permits long topicalization (and long relativization), but not long wh-movement. It should further be noted that some speakers prefer the resumptive prolepsis construction in (296c) to the somewhat marked long topicalization construction in (296b).

296

a.	Welk boeki	denk/*weet	je	[dat	Jan ti	gekocht	heeft]?	wh-question
	which book	think/know	you	that	Jan	bought	has
	'Which book do you think that Jan has bought?'

b.	(?)	Dit boeki	denk/weet	ik	[dat	Jan ti	gekocht	heeft].	topicalization
		this book	think.know	I	that	Jan	bought	has
		'This book I think/know that Jan has bought.'

c.	Van dit boeki	denk/weet	ik	[dat	Jan heti	gekocht	heeft].	prolepsis
	of this book	think/know	I	that	Jan it	bought	has
	'As for this book, I think/know that Jan has bought it.'

That topicalization involves wh-movement is also suggested by the fact that it is island-sensitive, just like question formation and relativization. We illustrate this in (297b) by means of an embedded polar question. For completeness' sake, we have added (297b') to show that the intended meaning can be expressed by means of a resumptive prolepsis construction.

297

a.	Ik	vraag	me	af	[of	Jan dat boek	gekocht	heeft]?
	I	wonder	refl	prt.	if	Jan that book	bought	has
	'I wonder whether Jan has bought that book.'

b.	*	Dat boeki	vraag	ik	me	af	[of	Jan ti	gekocht	heeft]?
		that book	wonder	I	refl	prt.	if	Jan	bought	has

b'.	Van dat boeki	vraag	ik	me	af	[of	Jan heti	gekocht	heeft]?
	of that book	wonder	I	refl	prt.	if	Jan it	bought	has
	'As for this book, I am wondering whether Jan has bought it.'

Example (298b) illustrates the island-sensitivity of topicalization by means of an adjunct island. In this case, the resumptive prolepsis construction is not available as an alternative because the verb huilen'to cry' does not license a resumptive van-PP.

298

a.	Jan huilt	[omdat	Marie dat boek	gestolen	heeft].
	Jan cries	because	Marie that book	stolen	has
	'Jan is crying because Marie has stolen that book.'

b.	*	Dat boeki	huilt Jan [omdat	Marie ti	gestolen	heeft].
		that book	cries Jan because	Marie	stolen	has

This subsection has shown that topicalization exhibits various hallmarks of wh-movement: it targets the clause-initial position, it can be extracted from clauses selected by bridge verbs and it is island-sensitive. What sets it apart from wh-movement and relativization is that it is a root phenomenon; it cannot target the initial position of embedded clauses. We refer to Hoekstra & Zwart (1994), Sturm (1996) and Zwart & Hoekstra (1997) for a discussion of the question as to whether this shows that topicalization targets a different position than wh-movement, as in fact would be claimed in the cartographic approach initiated by Rizzi (1997).

[+] III. Subject-initial clauses versus topicalization constructions

The standard view in generative grammar is that topicalization is responsible for verb second in declarative main clauses in Dutch. The verb is first moved into the C-position immediately preceding the canonical subject position, after which the specifier position of CP is filled by some topicalized phrase. This implies that subject-initial main clauses such as (299a) must be derived by topicalization, as indicated in the representation in (299b).

299

a.	Mijn zuster/Zij/Ze	heeft	dit boek	gelezen.	subject
	my sister/she/she	has	this book	read
	'My sister/she has read this book.'

If the derivation in (299) is correct, we would expect the placement of subjects to be subject to similar restrictions as other cases of topicalization, like in the examples in (300). We seen in Subsection I, however, that subjects crucially differ from objects in that they need not be accented. The effect is even more conspicuous with weak (phonetically reduced) pronouns; while (299a) shows that the weak subject pronoun ze'she' is fully acceptable in sentence-initial position, weak object pronouns like 'r'her' in (300a&b) are not because they cannot be accented; see, e.g., Bouma (2008:34) for more discussion. Adverbial PPs with a weak pronominal complement can be topicalized if the preposition can be assigned accent; see Salverda (2000).

300

a.	Mijn zuster/Haar/*'r	heb	ik	nog niet	gezien.	direct object
	my sister/her/her	have	I	yet not	seen
	'My sister/her I haven't seen yet.'

b.	Op mijn zuster/haar/*'r	wil ik niet wachten.	PP-object
	for my sister/her/her	want I not wait
	'My sister/Her I don't want to wait for.'

c.	Naast 'r	zat	een aardige heer.
	next.to her	sat	a kind gentleman
	'Next to her sat a kind gentleman.'

The same contrast is found with the weak R-word er: the examples in (301) show that expletive er, which is normally assumed to occupy the regular subject position, can easily occur in sentence-initial position, but that this is excluded for er functioning as a locative pro-form or the pronominal part of a PP; topicalization is only possible with strong forms like daar'there' and hier'here'; see, e.g., Bouma (2008:29-30). We will ignore here that things are slightly complicated by the fact that (sentence-initial) er may sometimes have more than one function; we refer the reader to Section P5.5.3 for discussion and examples.

301

a.	Er	spelen	veel kinderen	op straat.	expletive er
	there	play	many children	on street
	'There are many children playing in the street.'

b.	Daar/*Er	spelen	de kinderen	graag.	locative er
	there/there	play	the children	gladly
	'The children like to play there.'

c.	Daari/*Eri	wacht	ik	niet [ ti	op].	pronominal part of PP
	there/there	wait	I	not	for
	'That I won't wait for.'

That this contrast should have an impact on our syntactic analysis is clear from the fact illustrated in (302) that subject pronouns do exhibit a similar behavior as object pronouns if they are extracted from an embedded clause: whereas noun phrases like mijn zuster'my sister' and strong (phonetically non-reduced) subject pronouns such as zij give rise to a reasonably acceptable result, topicalization is excluded if the subject pronoun is weak.

302

a.	(?)	Mijn zusteri/Ziji	zei	Jan	[dat ti	dit boek	gelezen	had].
		my sister/she	said	Jan	comp	this book	read	had
		'My sister/she, Jan said had read the book.'

b.	*	Zei	zei	Jan [dat ti	dit boek	gelezen	had].
		she	said	Jan comp	this book	read	had

Section 9.3 concluded from this that regular subject-initial constructions do not involve topicalization but are derived by simply placing the subject in the regular subject position, the specifier of the T(ense) head. This resulted in the following derivations of subject-initial clauses and topicalization constructions; cf. Travis (1984) and Zwart (1992/1997). Note that these analyses suggest that subject-verb inversion is a hallmark of topicalization constructions; cf. Salverda (1982/2000).

303

a.		Subject-initial sentences

b.		Topicalization constructions

Observe that we are not claiming here that subjects cannot be topicalized, but only that they are not topicalized if they occur in a neutrally pronounced sentence. Examples like (304a) with contrastive accent on the subject may involve topicalization. That they do so is strongly suggested by expletive constructions like (304b); since it is normally assumed that the expletive er'there' occupies the regular subject position, the subject niemand can only occur in sentence-initial position as a result of topicalization. We added the locational adverbial phrase op de vergadering to example (304b) to block a locative interpretation of er'there' in order to ensure that er indeed functions as an expletive.

304

a.	Mijn zuster	heeft	dit boek	gelezen.
	my sister	has	this book	read
	'My sister/she has read this book.'

b.	Niemand	was er	op de vergadering.
	nobody	was there	at the meeting
	'Nobody was there at the meeting.'

The analyses suggested in (303) are interesting in view of the fact that subject-initial clauses are the most neutral form of an utterance from a semantic view point: while topicalized phrases are special in that they play a specific role in structuring the discourse, sentence-initial subjects are often neutral in this respect. The representations in (303) thus enable us to express formally this by postulating that like question formation and relativization, topicalization is semantically motivated; see Dik (1978: Section 8.3.3), Haegeman (1995), Rizzi (1997), and many others. This will be the main topic of Subsection IV.

[+] IV. Information structure: focus and topic

The information structure of a clause is closely related to its intonation pattern. In utterances like the (b)-examples in (305), which present new information only if intended as an answer to the question in (305a), the main accent is located at the end of the clause, normally on the constituent preceding the clause-final verbs; see Section 13.1, sub III, for more detailed discussion. We will refer to utterances with this intonation pattern as neutral clauses (in order to not complicate things we will discuss main clauses only).

305

a.	Wat	is er	gebeurd?
	what	is there	happened
	'What has happened?'

b.	Jan heeft	Marie	een brief	gestuurd.
	Jan has	Marie	a letter	sent
	'Jan has sent Marie a letter.'

b'.	Jan heeft	een brief	naar Marie	gestuurd.
	Jan has	a letter	to Marie	sent
	'Jan has sent a letter to Marie.'

The intonation pattern of utterances can be affected by the information structure of the clause. In the primed examples in (306), which contain both presupposed and new information if used as answers to the questions in the primeless examples, the main accent must be located in the new information of the clause (henceforth: the new-information focus); in the cases at hand, this results in the placement of the main accent in a more leftward position. For more information about assignment of main accent in clauses we refer the reader to Booij (1995).

306

a.	Wie heeft	Jan	een brief	gestuurd?	question
	who has	Jan	a letter	sent
	'Who has Jan sent a letter?'

a'.	Hij heeft	Marie	een brief	gestuurd.	answer
	Jan has	Marie	a letter	sent
	'He has sent Marie a letter.'

b.	Wat	heeft	Jan	naar Marie	gestuurd?	question
	what	has	Jan	to Marie	sent
	'What has Jan sent to Marie?'

b'.	Hij heeft	een brief	naar Marie	gestuurd.	answer
	Jan has	a letter	to Marie	sent
	'Jan has sent a letter to Marie.'

The following subsections will show that topicalization may also affect the intonation pattern of utterances; we will see that the way in which the intonation pattern is affected depends on the impact topicalization has on the information structure of the clause. There are also a number of cases in which topicalization does not seem to have such a great impact on the intonation of the clause; we will discuss some of the prototypical cases. Before we start, we want to note that the literature exhibits a great deal of variation when it comes to information-structural notions like focus and topic; cf. Erteschik-Shir (2007) for an extensive review. We aim at staying close to the use of these notions in É. Kiss' (2002:ch.1-6) description of the Hungarian clause, in which these notions play a prominent role.

[+] A. Contrastive/restrictive focus

The new-information focus can also be placed in sentence-initial position as a result of topicalization. So, next to the answers in the primed examples in (306), we also find utterances like (307a&b). The parentheses indicate that the presuppositional part of such answers is normally omitted.

307

a.	Marie	(heeft	hij	een brief	gestuurd).	answer to (306a)
	Marie	has	he	a letter	sent
	'Marie, he has sent a letter.'

b.	Een brief	(heeft	hij	naar Marie	gestuurd).	answer to (306b)
	a letter	has	he	to Marie	sent
	'A letter, he has sent to Marie.'

Jansen (1981: Section 4.2.1) claims that focus topicalization of the type in (307) is not very frequent (in non-interrogative contexts), which raises the question as to whether we are simply dealing with new-information focus or whether utterances such as (307) have some additional property. We tend to think that the accents in these topicalization constructions are stronger than those in the primed examples in (306), which may suggest that topicalization constructions express contrastive or restrictive focus in the sense that the proposition holds for the focussed phrases, to the exclusion of any other referent; see Section 13.3.2 for more discussion.
This would be in line with the fact that utterance (307a) expresses that in the relevant domain of discourse only Marie was sent a book by Jan: if it were to turn out that Jan also sent a letter to Peter and that the speaker uttering (307a) was aware of that, he could be accused of not being fully informative by withholding information. The same would hold for utterance (307b) if it turned out that Jan also sent cocaine to Marie.
That we are dealing with restrictive focus is also supported by the fact that it is often impossible to topicalize non-specific indefinite noun phrases, as these are typically used for introducing new information but cannot easily be used in a contrastive or a restrictive fashion. Example (308a') shows, for example, that topicalization of the existential pronoun iemand gives rise to a highly marked result, and (308b') shows that topicalization of an indefinite noun phrase such as een pianist is restricted to cases in which the speaker contradicts a certain presupposition on the part of the addressee: it would be acceptable as a reaction to the following question: Hoe was je ontmoeting met die cellist gisteren?'How was your meeting with that cellist yesterday?'.

308

a.	Ik	heb	gisteren	iemand	ontmoet.
	I	have	yesterday	someone	met
	'I met someone yesterday.'

a'.

Iemand heb ik gisteren ontmoet.

b.	Ik	heb	gisteren	een pianist	ontmoet.
	I	have	yesterday	a pianist	met
	'I met a pianist yesterday.'

b'.

Een pianist heb ik gisteren ontmoet.

The negative pronoun niemand'nobody', on the other hand, can be topicalized in constructions such as (309a) if the speaker wants to express that he did expect to see in Amsterdam at least one person from the given domain of discourse. Similarly, example (309b) expresses that the speaker did not expect to be able to meet in Amsterdam all individuals in the given domain of discourse.

309

a.	Niemand	heb	ik	in Amsterdam gezien	(zelfs	Jan	niet).
	nobody	have	I	in Amsterdam seen	even	Jan	not
	'Nobody, I have seen in Amsterdam (not even Jan).'

b.	Iedereen	heb	ik	in Amsterdam	kunnen	ontmoeten	(zelfs	marie).
	everybody	have	I	in Amsterdam	can	meet	even	Marie
	'Everyone, I have been able to meet in Amsterdam (even Marie).'

Another indication that we are not dealing with mere new-information focus is that the topicalized phrase may be preceded by an (emphatic) focus particle like zelfs'even', alleen'solely', slechts/maar'only': cf. Barbiers (1995:ch.3).

310

a.	Zelfs Marie	heeft	hij	een brief	gestuurd.
	even Marie	has	he	a letter	sent
	'He has even sent Marie a letter.'

b.	Alleen Marie	heeft	hij	een brief	gestuurd.
	only Marie	has	he	a letter	sent
	'Only Marie he has sent a letter.'

c.	Slechts twee studenten	haalden	het examen.
	only two students	passed	the exam
	'Only two students passed the exam.'

For want of more detailed information on the question as to whether topicalized focus phrases indeed necessarily express more than merely new information, we have to leave our suggestions above to future research.

[+] B. Aboutness topic

The sentence-initial position is typically occupied by an aboutness topic, a phrase referring to an entity about which the sentence as a whole provides more information. Although the three examples in (311) express the same propositions, they provide additional information about completely different topics: in (311a) the topic is the subject Jan, in (311b) the topic is the direct object de brief'the letter', and in (311c) the topic is embedded in the complementivenaar-PP. Observe that the comments in (311) typically contain new information and thus also contain sentence accent (which is again placed on the constituent preceding the clause-final verbs if the full comment consists of new information).

311

a.	[topic	Jan] [comment	heeft	de brief	naar Marie	gestuurd].
	[topic	Jan	has	the letter	to Marie	sent
	'Jan has sent the letter to Marie.'

b.	[topic	De brief] [comment	heeft	Jan naar Marie	gestuurd].
	[topic	the letter	has	Jan to Marie	sent
	'The letter, Jan has sent to Marie.'

c.	[topic	Naar Marie] [comment	heeft Jan de brief gestuurd].
	[topic	to Marie	has Jan the letter sent
	'To Marie, Jan has sent the letter.'

The new information in (311) is provided by an argument, but the examples in (312) show that this can also be an adverbial element that can be used contrastively, such as the negative adverb niet, which can be contrasted with the affirmative marker wel, or adverbs such as morgen'tomorrow', which can be contrasted with adverbs like vandaag'today' or nu'now'. For more examples, see Salverda (2000:100-1).

312

a.	Peter	heb	ik	nog niet	gezien.
	Peter	have	I	not yet	seen
	'Peter, I haven't seen yet.'

b.	Het boek	moet	je	morgen	maar	lezen.
	the book	must	you	tomorrow	prt	read
	'The book, you should read tomorrow.'

The aboutness topic is always part of the domain of discourse, which means that it must satisfy certain criteria: (i) it must be referential in the sense that it refers to an entity or set of entities and (ii) it must be specific, that is, the entity or set of entities must be identifiable in the domain of discourse. This implies that the aboutness topic is prototypically a proper noun, a referential personal pronoun, a definite noun phrase, a specific indefinite noun phrase, or a PP containing such a noun phrase; see É. Kiss (2002: chapter 2).

[+] C. Contrastive topics

Contrastive topics differ from aboutness topics in that they need not be referential or specific; the examples in (313) show that they can be non-individual-denoting elements like bare plurals, indefinite noun phrases, adverbial phrases and verbal particles; examples such as (313a&b) are of course also possible with definite noun phrases (de zwaan/zwanen'the swan/swans') but this is not illustrated here. Contrastive topics are accented and followed by a brief fall in intonation on the following comment, which gives rise to a typical "hat" contour marked by the symbols "/" and "\". Contrastive topic constructions convey that there is an alternative topic for which an alternative comment holds (cf. É. Kiss 2002: Section 2.7); we made this explicit in the examples in (313) by adding the part within parentheses.

313

a.	[topic	/Zwanen] [comment	\heb	ik	niet	gezien]	(maar	ganzen	wel).
	[topic	swans	have	I	not	seen	but	geese	aff
	'I haven't seen swans, but I did see geese.'

b.	[topic	/ Een zwaan][comment	\heb	ik	niet	gezien]	(maar	wel	een gans).
	[topic	a swan	have	I	not	seen	but	aff	a goose
	'I haven't seen a swan, but I did see a goose.'

c.	[topic	/Omhoog] [comment	\ga ik	met de lift]	(maar	omlaag	via de trap).
	[topic	up	go I	by the elevator	but	down	via the stairs
	'Up I will use the elevator, but down I will take the stairs.'

d.	[topic	/Tegen] [comment	\stemden	de socialisten]	(voor	de liberalen).
	[topic	against	voted	the socialists	for	the liberals.
	'The conservatives voted against (the bill), the liberals for.'

The intonation pattern found in utterances like (313) is also possible with individual-denoting elements like the topics in (311). Applying the "hat" contour to these examples will result in similar contrastive readings as those in (313). For completeness' sake, note that examples such (313d) refute the persistent claim that verbal particles cannot be topicalized (cf., e.g., Zwart 2011:72); this is possible provided that they stand in opposition to another verbal particle (cf. Hoeksema 1991a) and thus allow a contrastive interpretation. We refer the reader to Section 13.3.2, sub II, for a more detailed discussion of contrastive topics.

[+] D. Topic shift

The distal demonstrative pronouns die'that' and dat'that' are very common in sentence-initial position. These pronouns are used to refer to some referent in the immediately preceding context, as in example (314). We added indices in order to unambiguously indicate the intended interpretation of the pronoun. Topicalized demonstratives differ from the topicalized phrases discussed so far in that they need not have contrastive accent; see, e.g., Salverda (1982/2000) and Bouma (2008:45).

314

a.	Heb	je	Jani	gezien?	Nee,	diei	is	ziek.
	have	you	Jan	seen	no	dem	is	ill
	'Did you see Jan? No, he is ill.'

The demonstrative can be accented, in which case it receives a contrastive/restrictive focus interpretation. If it remains unstressed, it typically indicates topic shift, that is, a change of aboutness topic. In this respect distal demonstratives differ crucially from referential personal pronouns like hij'he' or zij'she', which typically refer to continuous topics. This is illustrated by means of the examples in (315); that the distal demonstrative brings about topic shift is clear from the fact that it cannot refer to the subject (the default topic) of the preceding sentence; referential pronouns are not subject to this restriction. We will not digress on topic shift here but refer the reader to Section N5.2.3.2, sub IIA1, for a more extensive discussion.

315

a.		[Jani	ontmoette	Elsj ]	en	[hiji/*diei	vertelde	haarj	dat ... ]
		Jan	met	Els	and	he/dem	told	her	that

b.		[Jani	ontmoette	Elsj ]	en	[zej/diej	vertelde	hemi	dat ... ]
		Jan	met	Els	and	she/ dem	told	him	that

Note further that distal demonstrative pro-forms like die'that' and dat'that' in sentence-initial position are often omitted in speech; we refer the reader to Section 11.2.2 for discussion of this.

[+] E. Connectives

The previous subsection has shown that unstressed demonstratives can be used to indicate a topic shift and are thus quite important for a smooth continuation of the discourse. Other topicalized elements with a similar function are connectives like daarom/dus'therefore', and desondanks'nevertheless', which are neither topical nor focal in nature but are simply used to indicate the relation between two successive sentences; cf. Salverda (1982).

316

a.	[Marie is ziek]	en	[daarom	kan	ik	niet	komen].
	Marie is ill	and	therefore	can	I	not	come
	'Marie is ill and therefore I cannot come.'

b.	[Marie is ziek]	maar	[desondanks	zal	ik	komen].
	Marie is ill	but	nevertheless	will	I	come
	'Marie is ill but nevertheless I will come.'

[+] F. Formal movement: movement without semantic effect

The cases of topicalization discussed in the previous subsections are all functionally motivated by information-structural considerations or considerations related to the organization of discourse. There are, however, many cases in which it is not so clear what the functional motivation of topicalization would be. Consider the examples in (317): it has been claimed that the locational PP in (317a) must be interpreted contrastively and thus be assigned accent, whereas the locational PP in (317b) can be interpreted neutrally and thus be pronounced without any phonetic prominence.

317

a.	In Utrecht	heeft	Marie haar broer	bezocht.
	in Utrecht	has	Marie her brother	visited
	'In Utrecht Marie has visited het brother.'

b.	In Utrecht	is Els erg populair.
	in Utrecht	is Els very popular
	'In Utrecht, Els is still very popular.'

This contrast between the two examples has been related to the semantic contribution of the PPs. The PP in (317a) is event-related in the sense that it is part of what is asserted: Marie has met Jan & this eventuality took place in Utrecht. This reading has the property that omission of the locational PP is possible without affecting the truth value of the assertion. The PP in (317b), on the other hand, is not event-related but is used to restrict the speaker's claim; this reading has the property that omission of the locational PP may affect the truth value of the assertion: from the fact that Els is popular in Utrecht we cannot infer that she is popular elsewhere. The contrast between the two examples in (318) shows that the difference between the two readings is associated with a difference in location of the PP in the middle field of the clause: while the PP can easily precede the subject in (318b), this gives rise to a marked result in (318a) (although the latter example improves if the subject is assigned contrastive accent). We refer to Maienborn (2001) for more detailed discussion.

318

a.	dat	<??in Utrecht>	Marie <in Utrecht>	haar broer	bezocht	heeft.
	that	in Utrecht	Marie	her brother	visited	has
	'that Marie has visited her brother in Utrecht.'

b.	dat	<in Utrecht>	Els <in Utrecht>	erg populair	is.
	that	in Utrecht	Els	very popular	is
	'that in Utrecht Els is still very popular.'

There is a wide range of (especially) adverbial phrases that are not directly event-related, and which may occur in sentence-initial positions with no or little emphasis; see Kooij (1978), Salverda (1982/2000) and Florijn (1992). These include at least certain restrictive temporal, modal, and speaker-related adverbials.

319

a.	In de middeleeuwen	waren	heksen	heel gewoon.	restrictive temporal
	in the middle ages	were	witches	very common
	'In the Middle Ages, witches were very common.'

b.	Misschien	komt	Peter straks	nog.	modal
	maybe	comes	Peter later	prt
	'Maybe Peter will come later.'

c.	Helaas	kan	Peter niet	komen.	speaker-related
	unfortunately	can	Peter not	come
	'Unfortunately, Peter cannot come.'

Examples of the type in (317b) and (319) are sometimes accounted for by introducing special mechanisms. Odijk (1995:section 2.1), for instance, proposes that adverbials like misschien'maybe' and helaas'unfortunately' can be base-generated in sentence-initial position. Alternatively, Frey (2006) claims in his discussion of similar German examples that all elements that may (optionally) precede the subject can be moved into the sentence-initial position simply in order to satisfy the V2-requirement; topicalization of such elements is thus predicted not to have any effect on the information structure of the clause. Frey claims that this is confirmed by the fact that dative objects can be topicalized without any special effect in passive and unaccusative constructions; the topicalized phrase in the primed examples in (320) should be able to receive a neutral interpretation in terms of information structure and should not require any special phonetic prominence.

320

a.	dat	Peter/hem/'m	gisteren	een gratis maaltijd	werd	aangeboden.
	that	Peter/him/'m	yesterday	a free meal	was	prt-offered
	'that a free meal was offered to Peter/him yesterday.'

a'.	Peter/Hem/*'m	werd	gisteren	een gratis maaltijd	aangeboden.
	Peter/him/'m	was	yesterday	a free meal	prt.-offered
	'A free meal was offered to Peter/him yesterday.'

b.	dat	Peter/hem/'m	die voorstelling	goed	bevallen	is.
	that	Peter/him/him	that show	well	pleased	is
	'that that show has pleased Peter/him a lot.'

b'.	Peter/Hem/*'m	is die voorstelling	goed	bevallen.
	Peter/him/him	is that show	well	pleased
	'That show has pleased Peter/him a lot.'

Although it does seem to be the case that the topicalized dative objects do not need any special emphasis, the primed examples nevertheless show that they differ from sentence-initial subjects in that they are not able to take the form of the weak pronoun 'm'him' (see also Bouma 2008:26); this may be incompatible with Frey's claim. Because the judgments on the contrast between the two examples in (317) are subtle anyway, we have to leave it to future research to further investigate whether formal movement in the sense of Frey really exists; it might be interesting, for example, to see whether Frey's claim that the presumed cases of formal movement do not involve any form of prosodic prominence can be confirmed by an in-depth phonetic investigation.

[+] V. Pied piping and stranding

Subsection IV has shown that topicalization is often semantically motivated. If we restrict ourselves to those forms of topicalization related to information-structure, we can say that topicalization may be used to create a focus-background, a topic-comment, or a topic-focus structure. As in the case of wh-question, we would expect that it would suffice to topicalize the focus/topic element, and this raises the question as to whether topicalization may trigger pied piping. It seems that we have to answer this question in the affirmative. Consider the question answer-pair in (321). We have seen that questions like (321a) involve pied piping: while movement of the interrogative pronoun wiens'whose' would in principle suffice to form the desired operator-variable chain, syntactic restrictions force movement of the complete noun phrase wiens boek'whose book'. Since the focus in the answer in (321b) corresponds to the wh-pronoun wiens we can immediately conclude that topicalization of a focus may trigger pied piping.

321

a.	[Wiens boek]i	heb	je ti	gekocht?
	whose book	have	you	bought
	'Whose book have you bought?'

b.	[Jans boek]i	heb	ik ti	gekocht
	Jan's book	have	I	bought
	'Jan's book, I have bought.'

The same can be illustrated by means of the question-answer pair in (322): while wh-movement of the nominal complement of the preposition op suffices in principle to create the desired operator-variable chain in (322a), the restrictions on preposition stranding in Dutch force movement of the complete PP op wie'for who'. As the focus in answer (322b) corresponds to the wh-phrase wie, this example again shows that topicalization of a focused phrase may trigger pied piping.

322

a.	[Op wie]i	wacht	je ti?
	for who	wait	you
	'Who are you waiting for?'

b.	[Op Jan]i	wacht	ik ti.
	for Jan	wait	I
	'Jan, I am waiting for.'

That pied piping depends on independent syntactic constraints can be seen once again by considering the question-answer pair in (323); the question in (323a) shows that stranding of prepositions is possible if the complement is an R-word like waar. The fact that the focused constituent de post'the post' must pied-pipe the preposition op shows that pied piping cannot be semantically motivated.

323

a.	Waari	wacht	je [ti op]?
	where	wait	you
	'What are you waiting for?'

b.	[Op de post]i	wacht	ik ti.
	for the post	wait	I
	'The mail, I am waiting for.'

The examples in (324) illustrate that topicalization of contrastively accented phrases may also trigger pied piping.

324

a.	[[Jans boek]i	zal	ik ti	kopen]	(maar	Els' boek	niet).
	Jan's book	will	I	buy	but	Els' book	not
	'Jan's book I will buy, but Els' book I won't.'

b.	[[Op Jan]i	zal	ik ti	wachten]	(maar	op Els niet).
	for Jan	will	I	wait	but	for Els not
	'Jan I will wait for, but I won't for Els.'

c.	Mijn moeder is 115 jaar,	maar	[zo oudi	[word	ik	echt	niet ti]].
	my mother is 115 year	but	that old	become	I	really	not
	'My mother is 115 years old, but that old I really won't become.'

Although it is known that stranding and pied piping are relevant notions in the domain of topicalization (cf. Van Riemsdijk 1978), the literature normally focuses on wh-movement and relativization, because these allow us to investigate these phenomena without having to appeal to discourse; to our knowledge there is no detailed investigation of pied piping in topicalization contexts that takes information-structural considerations into account. We tend to think that there are not a great many differences vis-à vis question formation and relativization but this should be confirmed by a more careful investigation than we are able to conduct here.

[+] VI. Topicalization of verbal projections

Topicalization differs from question formation and relativization in that it allows wh-movement of certain types of clauses and other verbal projections. This difference is due to the fact that question formation and relativization normally affect some pronoun or other pro-form while topicalization affects full focus/topic phrases. This means that in the case of question formation and relativization the only way to get a clause in clause-initial position would be by pied piping, but this is prohibited across-the-board: wh-movement of a (part of a) clausal constituent is not able to pied-pipe the containing clause.

325

a.	Wat	zei	hij?	Dat	hij	Peter niet gelooft.	question formation
	what	said	he	that	he	Peter not believes
	'What did he say? That he doesn't believe Peter.'

b.	De opmerking	[die	me	hindert]	is	dat	hij Peter niet	gelooft.	relativization
	the remark	that	me	bothers	is	that	he Peter not	believes
	'The remark that bothers me is that he doesn't believe Peter.'

c.	[Focus/Topic	Dat	hij	Peter	niet	gelooft]	hindert	me.	topicalization
	[Focus/Topic	that	he	Peter	not	believes	annoys	me
	'That he doesn't believe Peter annoys me.'

It is often claimed that constructions with a topicalized verbal projection (and argument clauses in particular) should be analyzed as left-dislocation constructions with a deleted (phonetically empty) resumptive pronoun; see Koster (1978) and Odijk (1998) for, respectively, a fairly early and a fairly recent discussion of this issue. This subsection will also consider whether the topicalization constructions discussed in this subsection have a corresponding left-dislocation construction in order to see whether this claim can be maintained, subsection A starts by discussing topicalization of (finite and infinitival) argument clauses, which is followed in Subsection B by a discussion of topicalization of adverbial clauses, subsection C addresses VP-topicalization, that is, topicalization of verbal complements of non-main verbs, subsection D summarizes some of the main finding and draws some general conclusions.

[+] A. Argument clauses

Chapter 5 has shown that there are various syntactic types of argument clauses. The main division is that between finite and non-finite clauses, and the latter can be subdivided further into om + te-infinitival, te-infinitival and bare infinitival clauses. We discuss these (sub)types in the following subsections.

[+] 1. Finite clauses

The singly-primed examples in (326) show that finite subject and direct object clauses can readily be topicalized, and the doubly-primed examples show that such clauses may also appear in left-dislocated position, followed by the resumptive pronoun dat'that' in clause-initial position. These examples thus seem to support the hypothesis that topicalization constructions are left-dislocation constructions with a phonetically empty resumptive element. An additional argument in favor of this hypothesis is that the anticipatory pronoun het'it' in the primeless examples cannot be used in the singly-primed topicalization constructions. This would follow immediately if these constructions indeed contained a phonetically empty resumptive subject/object pronoun: the anticipatory pronoun het could then simply not appear for the same reason that it cannot appear in the doubly-primed examples—it cannot be assigned an independent syntactic function.

326

a.	Het	hindert	me	[dat	hij	Peter	niet	gelooft].	subject
	it	annoys	me	that	he	Peter	not	believes
	'It annoys me that he doesn't believe Peter.'

a'.

[Dat

hij

Peter

niet

gelooft] hindert (*het) me.

a''.

[Dat

hij

Peter

niet

gelooft], dat hindert me.

b.	Hij	betwistte	(het)	[dat hij te laat was].	direct object
	he	disputed	it	that he too late was
	'He disputed (it) that he was late.'

b'.

[Dat hij te laat was] betwistte hij (*het).

b''.

[Dat hij te laat was], dat betwistte hij.

Things are different in the case of verbs selecting a prepositional object. Even verbs that do not require an anticipatory pronominal PP to be present do not allow topicalization of the clause. Left dislocation, on the other hand, is fully acceptable.

327

a.	Jan twijfelde	(erover)	[of	hij	het boek zou	kopen].	PP-complement
	Jan doubted	about.it	if	he	the book would	buy
	'Jan doubted (about it) whether he would buy the book.'

[Of hij het boek zou kopen] twijfelde Jan (erover).

[Of hij het boek zou kopen], daar twijfelde Jan over.

Example (328) shows that omission of the pronominal part of the discontinuous PP daar ... over in example (327b) also gives rise to an unacceptable result for most speakers (although some speakers seem to accept it at a pinch). The impossibility of omitting daar poses a problem for the hypothesis that the topicalization constructions above are left-dislocation constructions with a phonetically empty resumptive element, and requires the introduction of some auxiliary hypothesis to regulate the deletion of resumptive pronouns.

328

	%	[Of	hij	het boek	zou	kopen]	twijfelde	Jan	over.
		whether	he	the book	would	buy	doubted	Jan	about

Topicalization of finite argument clauses seems to be quite unrestricted. One exceptional case, taken from Odijk (1998), is given in (329). Although Odijk's judgment on (329b) is correct, it should be noted that example (329a) is an innovation in the language, as is clear from the fact that this use is not included in the latest (14th) edition of the Van Dale dictionary. Furthermore, many of our informants give an affirmative answer to the question as to whether (329a) should be considered an abbreviation of the more regular expression Jan belde om te zeggen dat hij ziek was; compare the translation of (329a) which was taken from Odijk's article. We therefore provisionally conclude that topicalization of finite argument clauses is always possible.

329

a.	Hij	belde	[dat	hij	ziek	was].
	he	called	that	he	ill	was
	'He called to say that he was ill.'

[Dat hij ziek was] belde hij.

[+] 2. Om + te- and te-infinitival clauses

It less clear to what extent om + te- and te-infinitival clauses can be preposed. Koster (1987:129) claims for te-infinitivals that this is "often difficult" and subsequently assigns them an asterisk. Zwart (1993:263) presents a case of topicalization of a te-infinitive as fully acceptable, while Odijk (1995:12) claims that such cases "are always somewhat marginal"; in later work, Zwart (2011:112) assigns two question marks to both topicalized om + te- and te-infinitival clauses. We agree that topicalization of om + te- and te-infinitivals normally gives rise to a marked result, but we also feel that topicalization leads to a markedly worse result in the case of om + te-infinitivals; this is what we try to express by means of our diacritics on the two singly-primed examples in (330). The left-dislocation constructions in the doubly-primed examples seem fully acceptable (although speakers again seem to vary somewhat in their judgments). Observe that the contrast between the singly- and doubly-primed examples is unexpected on the hypothesis that topicalization constructions are left-dislocation constructions with a deleted (phonetically empty) resumptive pronoun.

330

a.	Jani weigert	[(om) PROi	weg	te gaan].	om + te-infinitival
	Jan refuses	comp	away	to go
	'Jan refuses to leave.'

a'.

[(om) PROi weg te gaan] weigert Jani.

a''.

[(om) PROi weg te gaan], dat weigert Jani.

b.	Jani probeert	al	tijden [PROi	de auto	te repareren].	te-infinitival
	Jan tries	already	ages	the car	to repair
	'Jan has been trying for ages to repair the car.'

b'.

[PROi de auto te reparen] probeert Jani al tijden.

b''.

[PROi de auto te reparen], dat probeert Jani al tijden.

The examples in (330) involve direct object clauses. In (331), we give similar examples with a verb selecting a prepositional object.

331

a.	Jani klaagde	(erover) [PROi	niet	te kunnen	komen].
	Jan complained	about.it	not	to be.able	come
	'Jan complained about not being able to come.'

[PROi

niet

te kunnen

komen] klaagde Jani (erover).

[PROi

niet

te kunnen

komen] daar klaagde Jani over.

Example (332) shows that omission of the pronominal part of the discontinuous PP daar ... over in the left-dislocation construction (331b) gives rise to a quite marked result for most speakers. This is again problematic for the claim that topicalization constructions are left-dislocation constructions with a phonetically empty resumptive element.

332

	%	[Niet	te kunnen	komen]	klaagde	Jan over.
		not	to be.able	come	complained	Jan about

The discussion above is typical for opaque and semi-transparent infinitival clauses which may occur in extraposed position; cf. Section 5.2.2.3. There are a number of additional, complicating issues for transparent te-infinitivals, that is, infinitivals that exhibit verb clustering and the infinitivus-pro-participio effect. However, because topicalization of te-infinitival normally gives rise to a marked result and we can discuss the same issues by means of fully acceptable cases in which a bare infinitival clause is topicalized, we will address these issues in the next subsection.

[+] 3. Bare infinitivals

At first sight, topicalization of bare VPs seems easily possible, but closer scrutiny soon reveals that there are at least two complicating issues. The first issue is related to the fact that om general bare infinitival clauses are obligatorily split as a result of verb clustering. This phenomenon is illustrated in (333a) for the bare infinitival complement of the modal main verb willen'to want'. When we now consider the corresponding examples in (333b&c) notice to our surprise that clause splitting is optional (although we should note that dat hij graag die problemen oplossen wil is possible as a marked order). The primed examples are added to show that both topicalization constructions alternate with a left-dislocation counterpart, as predicted by the hypothesis that the topicalization constructions are left-dislocation constructions with a deleted (phonetically empty) resumptive pronoun.

333

a.	dat	hij	<die problemen>	graag	wil <*die problemen>	oplossen.
	that	he	those problems	gladly	wants	prt.-solve
	'that he dearly to solve those problems.'

Die problemen oplossen wil hij graag.

b'.

Die problemen oplossen, dat wil hij graag.

Oplossen wil hij die problemen graag.

c'.

Oplossen, dat wil hij die problemen graag.

A second problematical factor is related to the Infinitivus-Pro-Participio (IPP) effect. Example (334a) first shows that in perfect-tense constructions the matrix verb does not appear as a past participle but as an infinitive. The singly-primed examples in (334) show that the IPP-effect disappears in the topicalization constructions, regardless of whether the infinitival clause is split or not. The primed examples show the same for the corresponding left-dislocation constructions.

334

a.	Hij	had	die problemen	graag	willen/*gewild	oplossen.
	he	had	those problems	gladly	want/wanted	prt.-solve
	'He had wanted to solve those problems very much.'

Die problemen oplossen had hij graag gewild/*willen.

b'.

Die problemen oplossen, dat had hij graag gewild/*willen.

Oplossen had hij die problemen graag gewild/*willen.

c'.

Oplossen, dat had hij die problemen graag gewild/*willen.

The set of data in (333) and (334) thus shows that the core properties of constructions with transparent infinitives (clause splitting and IPP) disappear if the infinitival clause is topicalized. Although this has been known for a long time, there are still no theoretical accounts of it that meet with general acceptance. This is related to the current state of theories for these two phenomena. First, there are many competing theories on verb clustering that are more or less successful in describing the core data (see Section 7.5), but these are often quite different in nature and therefore also require quite different approaches to the (b)- and (c)-examples in (333). Second, there are only a few theories available for the IPP-effect, and most of these are highly controversial, so that we can at best conclude from the data in (334) that the IPP-effect only arises if the embedded main verb is physically located in the verbal cluster, a suggestion supported by examples such as (335), which show that the IPP-effect must be preserved if the full (non-finite part of the) verb cluster is topicalized.

335

Willen/*Gewild	oplossen	had	hij	die problemen	graag.
want/wanted	prt.-solve	had	he	those problems	gladly
'He had dearly wanted to solve those problems very much.'

We will return to the problem of clause splitting illustrated in examples (333b&c) in Subsection C on VP-topicalization, but have to leave the other questions and issues to future research.
The remainder of this subsection is devoted to an issue regarding topicalization of bare infinitival argument clauses that is more specifically related to accusativus-cum-infinitivo constructions such as (336a), in which we have again italicized the full complement clause. Example (336b'') shows that it is impossible to topicalize the full bare infinitival clause: the subject die man must remain in the middle field of the matrix clause. The two remaining (b)-examples show that the direct object de boeken can but need not be part of the topicalized phrase. Observe that we added the negative adverb niet'not' to (336b''), as these topicalization constructions are natural only if the middle field contains some material next to the subject of the matrix verb.

336

a.	dat	hij	die man	de boeken	niet	zag	stelen.
	that	he	that man	the books	not	saw	steal
	'that he didn't see the man steal the books.'

Stelen zag hij die man de boeken niet.

b'.

De boeken stelen zag hij die man niet.

b''.

Die man de boeken stelen zag hij niet.

One way of accounting for contrast between (336b') and (336b'') might be to appeal to the fact that while the object of the infinitival clause can be assigned accusative case by the infinitival verb stelen'to steal', the subject of the infinitival clause must be assigned accusative case by the matrix verb zien'to see', as is clear from the fact that it can be replaced by the object pronoun hem'him'; cf. Section 5.2.3.3. It might be that topicalization as in (336b'') makes the latter, exceptional form of case assignment impossible; see Lasniks (1999) discussion of "raising to object" in English for a line of thinking that may indeed have this effect. A potential (but not insurmountable) problem for this suggestion is that it is sometimes claimed that the subject can be part of the topicalized clause if it is indefinite, as in (337b''); cf. Odijk (1998:204). We again added the negative adverb niet'not' to this example in order to make it more natural, but even then many speakers find examples like these highly questionable, for which reason we have assigned it a percentage sign.

337

a.	dat	hij	iemand	de boeken	zag	stelen.
	that	he	someone	the books	saw	steal
	'that he saw someone steal the books.'

Stelen zag hij iemand de boeken.

b'.

De boeken stelen zag hij iemand.

b''.

Iemand de boeken stelen zag hij niet.

[+] B. Adverbial clauses

From a syntactic point of view, topicalization of adverbial clauses seems quite unrestricted; we illustrate this in (338) for finite adverbial clauses of various kinds.

338

a.	Voordat	ik	vertrek,	bezoek	ik	mijn moeder.	temporal
	before	I	leave	visit	I	my mother
	'Before I leave, I will visit my mother.'

b.	Omdat/Doordat	Jan ziek	is,	gaat	het feest	niet	door.	reason/cause
	because/because	Jan ill	is	continue	the party	not	prt.
	'Because Jan is ill, the party is cancelled.'

c.	Als	je	op deze knop	drukt,	gaat	de computer	aan.	conditional
	if	one	on this button	presses	goes	the computer	on
	'If one presses this button, the computer starts up.'

d.	Ondanks	dat	hij	ziek	was,	was hij aanwezig.	concessive
	despite	that	he	ill	was	was he present
	'Despite his illness, he was present.'

This does not mean, however, that anything goes. Topicalization of an adverbial result clause such as (339a'), for instance, is distinctly odd. We marked this example with a dollar sign in order to indicate that its markedness is probably of a non-syntactic nature, and simply reflects the general tendency to present eventualities in the order of their actual occurrence: cf. Jan stond op en kleedde zich aan'Jan got up and dressed' versus $Jan kleedde zich aan en stond op. Example (339b') presents another marginal case of topicalization that can potentially be accounted for in a similar way.

339

a.	Jan ging	naar buiten	zodat	hij	meer licht	had.	result
	Jan went	to outside	so.that	he	more light	had
	'Jan went outside so that he would have more light.'

a'.

Zodat hij meer licht had, ging hij naar buiten.

b.	Je	mag	komen,	mits	je	je	gedraagt.	conditional
	you	may	come	provided	you	refl	behave
	'You may come provided that you behave.'

b'.

Mits je je gedraagt, mag je komen.

The examples in (340) show that infinitival adverbial clauses are like finite ones in that they normally can be topicalized easily. Note in passing that goals differ from results in that they can be topicalized, which may be due to the fact that a goal comes into existence before the action that aims at realizing it.

340

a.	Alvorens	te vertrekken,	bezoek	ik	mijn moeder.	temporal
	before	to leave	visit	I	my mother
	'Before leaving, I will visit my mother.'

b.	Om	meer licht	te krijgen,	ging Jan naar buiten.	goal
	comp	more light	to get	went Jan to outside
	'In order to get more light, Jan went outside.'

For completeness' sake, we want to note that it is generally not easy to left-dislocate adverbial clauses; this is illustrated in (341a) for the temporal adverbial clause in (338a). Conditional clauses are a notable exception; this is illustrated in (341b) for the conditional clause in (338c).

341

a.	*	Voordat	ik	vertrek,	dan	bezoek	ik	mijn moeder.	temporal
		before	I	leave	then	visit	I	my mother
		'Before I leave, I will visit my mother.'

b.	Als	je	op deze knop	drukt,	dan	gaat	de computer	aan.	conditional
	if	one	on this button	presses	then	goes	the computer	on
	'If one presses this button, the computer starts up.'

The unacceptability of examples such as (341a) suggests that the hypothesis formulated for argument clauses that topicalization constructions are actually left-dislocation constructions with a deleted (phonetically empty) resumptive pronoun cannot readily be applied to adverbial clauses.

[+] C. Complements of non-main verbs (VP-topicalization)

The previous subsections have shown that (finite and infinitival) clauses functioning as clausal constituents can normally be topicalized. This subsection shows that the same holds for verbal complements of non-main verbs. We will discuss the three cases in (342), that is, non-main verbs that take a complement headed by a past/passive participle, a te-infinitive and a bare infinitive. Because these cases all involve contrastive accent on the topicalized phrase and all receive a contrastive interpretation, we may safely assume that we are dealing with focus constructions.

342

a.	Hij	heeft	nooit	geschaakt.	past/passive participle
	he	has	never	played.chess
	'He has never played chess.'

a'.

Geschaakt heeft hij nooit.

b.	Hij	zit	daar	te schaken.	te-infinitive
	he	sits	there	to play.chess
	'He is playing chess over there.'

b'.

Te schaken zit hij daar.

c.	Hij	gaat	morgen	schaken.	bare infinitive
	he	goes	tomorrow	play.chess
	'He is going to play chess tomorrow.'

c'.

Schaken gaat hij morgen.

[+] 1. Perfect tense and passive constructions

Perfect tense constructions like (343a) easily allow topicalization of the perfect participle. The resulting construction in (343a') is potentially problematic as topicalization seems to affect a single word, while wh-movement normally affects phrases. The (b)-examples show, however, that it is also possible to topicalize verb phrases.

343

a.	Hij	heeft	dat boek	nog	nooit	gelezen.
	he	has	that book	yet	never	read
	'He has never read that book.'

a'.

Gelezen heeft hij dat boek nog nooit.

b.	Hij	heeft	nog	nooit	boeken	gelezen.
	he	has	yet	never	books	read
	'He has never read aby books.'

b'.

[Boeken gelezen]heeft hij nog nooit.

Den Besten & Webelhuth (1987) argue that the contrast between the two primed examples in (343) is only apparent and that they both involve topicalization of a verb phrase (VP); the difference in size of the topicalized VP is merely a side effect of some other phenomenon of Dutch, viz. scrambling. When we consider the two primeless examples in (343) we see that the direct objects occupy different locations: the definite object dat boek precedes the adverbial phrase nog nooit while the indefinite object boeken'books' follows it. Den Besten & Webelhuth argue that this is due to leftward movement (scrambling) of the definite object to some position external to the VP; the two primeless examples in (343) thus have the (simplified) structures given in the primeless examples in (344). If these are the input for VP-topicalization, we end up with the structures in the primed examples.

344

a.		Hij	heeft	dat boeki	nog nooit [VPti	gelezen].	scrambling of object
		he	has	that book	yet never	read

a'.

[VPtigelezen]j heeft hij dat boeki nog nooit tj.

VP-topicalization

b.		Hij	heeft	nog nooit [VP	boeken	gelezen].	no scrambling of object
		he	has	yet never	books	read

b'.

[VPboeken gelezen]j heeft hij nog nooit tj.

VP-topicalization

On this view the apparent movement of the participle is the result of movement of the remnant of the VP after scrambling, and Den Besten & Webelhuth therefore refer to this type of topicalization as remnant VP-topicalization. There are various empirical arguments in favor of an analysis of this kind. First, we predict that elements that are difficult to scramble normally cannot be stranded by VP-topicalization either. This holds, e.g., for the complementive AP ziek'ill' in the copular construction in (345); the examples in (345b&b') show that it must be taken along under VP-topicalization. For completeness' sake, we added (345b'') to show that the actual position of the complementive in the middle field does not affect the acceptability judgments.

345

a.	Hij	is	<*ziek>	gelukkig	niet <ziek>	geworden.
	he	is	ill	fortunately	not	become
	'Fortunately, he hasn't become ill.'

[Ziek geworden]j is hij gelukkig niet tj.

b'.

[ti Geworden]j is hij zieki gelukkig niet tj.

b''.

[ti Geworden]j is hij gelukkig niet ziekitj.

The examples in (346) show essentially the same for complementives like the AP paars'purple' and the PP in zijn spaarpot'in his money box' in resultative constructions (although it should be noted that these examples improve if the complementives are given emphatic accent). For completeness' sake, note that the structures in the primed examples are somewhat simplified, e.g., by not indicating the movement of the direct object; cf. (349) below.

346

a.	Hij	heeft	het hek	<*paars>	gisteren <paars>	geverfd.
	he	has	the gate	purple	yesterday	painted
	'Yesterday he painted the gate purple.'

a'.

[Paars geverfd]j heeft hij het hek tj.

a''.

[tiGeverfd] heeft hij het hek paarsitj.

b.	Hij	heeft	het geld	<*in zijn spaarpot>	gisteren <in zijn spaarpot>	gestopt.
	he	has	the money	in his money.box	yesterday	put
	'Yesterday he put the money in his money box.'

b'.

[In zijn spaarpot gestopt]j heeft hij het geld tj.

b''.

[ti Gestopt]j heeft hij het geld [in zijn spaarpot]itj.

Second, we expect that elements that normally scramble into some more leftward position in the middle field must be stranded by VP-topicalization. The examples in (347) show that this prediction is borne out for weak (phonetically reduced) pronouns like het'it'.

347

a.	Hij	heeft	<het>	nog nooit <*het>	gelezen.
	he	has	it	yet never	read
	'He has never read it uet.'

[tiGelezen]jheeft hij heti nog nooit tj.

b'.

[Het gelezen]jheeft hij nog nooit tj.

Third, example (348a) shows that scrambling of the definite noun phrase de auto is optional (or, more precisely, depends on whether or not it introduces new information) and we therefore expect that it can optionally be stranded (again depending on its information-structural status). The (b)-examples show that this is again borne out.

348

a.	Ik	heb	<de auto>	gisteren <de auto>	gerepareerd.
	I	have	the car	yesterday	repaired
	'Yesterday I repaired the car.'

b.	[ti	Gerepareerd]j	heb	ik	de autoi	wel tj	(maar	nog	niet	gewassen).
	[ti	repaired	have	I	the car	aff	but	yet	not	washed
	'I have repaired the car (but I haven't washed it yet).'

b'.	[De auto	gerepareerd]j	heb	ik	wel tj	(maar	nog	niet	[het hek	geverfd]).
	the car	repaired	have	I	aff	but	yet	not	the gate	painted
	'I have repaired the car (but I haven't painted the gate yet).'

Finally, since scrambling need not affect all VP-internal elements equally, we expect that VP-topicalization may strand some of these elements while taking along some of the others. This was in fact already illustrated in (346), in which VP-topicalization takes along the complementive while stranding the direct object, which is base generated as the logical subject of the complementive phrase in a so-called small clause configuration; cf. Section 2.2. The remnant VP-topicalization approach would thus assign to these examples the structural representations in (349).

349

[[small clausetiPaars] geverfd]j heeft hij het hekitj.

[[small clauseti In zijn spaarpot] gestopt]j heeft hij het gelditj.

The same can be shown by means of the double object construction in (350b): while the indirect object is stranded in the middle field of the clause, the direct object is still part of the topicalized VP.

350

a.	De gemeente	heeft	de koning	nog	niet	eerder	een concert	aangeboden.
	the municipality	has	the king	yet	not	before	a concert	prt.-offered
	'The municipality hasn't yet offered the King a concert before.'

[ti Een concert aangeboden]j heeft de gemeente de koningi nog niet eerder tj.

Example (351) provides one more example with the verb beveiligen'to safeguard' that selects a direct and a prepositional object: in the primed example the PP-object is taken along under VP-topicalization, while the direct object is stranded.

351

a.	Hij	heeft	zijn huis	nog	niet	tegen inbraak	beveiligd.
	he	has	his house	yet	not	against burglary	safeguarded
	'He hasn't safeguarded his house against burglary yet.'

[ti Tegen inbraak beveiligd]j heeft hij zijn huisi nog niet tj.

At first sight, it seems that extraposed complement clauses can optionally be stranded under VP-topicalization, which would be surprising given that such clauses normally do not scramble. This impression may be deceptive, however, because postverbal complement clauses can also be right-dislocated, as is clear (352a). They can be introduced by the anticipatory pronoun het. That pied piped clauses are extraposed while stranded clauses are left-dislocated is suggested by the fact that the former do not allow the addition of the anticipatory pronoun while the latter actually prefer it to be present.

352

a.	Jan wil	(het)	niet	beloven	[dat	hij	komt].
	Jan wants	it	not	promise	that	he	comes
	'Jan doesn't want to promise (it) that he will come.'

b.		[Beloven	[dat	hij	komt]]	wil	hij	(*het)	niet.
		promise	that	he	comes	wants	he	it	not

b'.		[Beloven]	wil	hij	?(het)	niet	[dat	hij	komt].
		promise	wants	he	it	not	that	he	comes

The discussion above has shown that the remnant VP-topicalization approach is quite successful in accounting for a number of core properties of VP-topicalization. There are, however, also a number of potential problems. We restrict our discussion here to one problem that can be illustrated on the basis of Standard Dutch, and refer the reader to Haider (1990) for a number of potential problems more specifically related to German. The problem in question, which was signaled by Den Besten & Webelhuth (1990), concerns the position of stranded prepositions. Section P5.3 has shown that stranded prepositions must be adjacent to the verb(s) in clause-final position. This suggests that they occupy a VP-internal position and we therefore expect that they must be taken along under VP-topicalization, but this is not borne out. The (b)-examples in (353) illustrate this by means of the discontinuous pronominal PP er ..op'on it'.

353

a.	Hij	had	er	niet	op	gerekend.
	he	had	there	not	on	counted
	'He hadn't counted on it.'

Gerekend had hij er niet op.

b'.

Op gerekend had hij er niet.

It must be noted, however, that this problem only occurs on the traditional assumption that PP-complements are base-generated as complements of verbs, but that it has been argued on independent grounds that PP-complements are actually base-generated external to the lexical projection of the verb (cf. Barbiers 1995:ch.4), or perhaps even created in the course of the derivation (cf. Kayne 2004). If we adopt one of these proposals, the pattern in (353) is in fact expected: see Broekhuis (2008:115ff.) and references cited there.
The primed examples in (354) show that passive constructions also allow topicalization of the participle. Again we may assume that we are dealing with topicalization of VPs in both cases, although the VP-internal traces are now coindexed with the noun phrase that has been promoted to subject.

354

a.	Dat boek	wordt	niet meer	gelezen.
	that book	is	no longer	read
	'That book isn't read any more.'

a'.

[tiGelezen]j wordt dat boeki niet meer tj.

b.	Zijn huis	is	nog	niet	tegen inbraak beveiligd.
	his house	is	yet	not	against burglary safeguarded
	'His house is not yet burglarproof.'

b'.

[ti Tegen inbraak beveiligd]j is zijn huisi nog niet tj.

It seems that the subject of a passive construction can sometimes marginally remain VP-internal if it is indefinite, but then the regular subject position is normally filled by the expletive er if the middle field does not contain any presuppositional material.

355

a.	Er	worden	bijna	geen boeken	meer	gelezen.
	there	are	almost	no books	any.more	read
	'Books are hardly read any more.'

b.		[Boeken	gelezen]	worden	*(?er)	bijna	niet	meer.
		books	read	are	there	almost	not	any.more

Haider (1990) claims for German that indefinite subjects of active monadic verbs can also be taken along by VP-topicalization (which would be in line with the current view that such subjects are base-generated in a VP-internal position). This gives rise to a rather marginal result in Dutch, as is illustrated in the (a)-examples for the intransitive verb spelen'to play' and in the (b)-examples for the unaccusative verb sterven'to die'.

356

a.	Er	hebben	hier	nog	nooit	kinderen	gespeeld.	intransitive
	there	have	here	yet	never	children	played
	'Children have never played here.'

a'.

[Kinderen gespeeld]i hebben (er) hier nog nooit ti.

b.	Er	zijn	daardoor	nog	nooit	patiënten	gestorven.	unaccusative
	there	are	by.that	yet	never	patients	died
	'Patients have never died because of that so far.'

b'.

[Patiënten gestorven]i zijn (er) daardoor nog nooit ti.

Haider also claims that indefinite subjects of dyadic verbs can be taken along under VP-topicalization provided that the object is stranded. The primed examples in (357) show that this is impossible in Dutch if the verb is transitive, while it gives rise to a marginal result if it is unaccusative (that is, a nom-datverb).

357

a.	Er	heeft	nog	nooit	een buitenlander	die derby	gewonnen.	transitive
	there	has	yet	never	a foreigner	that derby	won
	'A foreigner has never won that derby so far.'

a'.

[Een buitenlander ti gewonnen]j heeft [die (derby)]i nog nooit tj.

b.	Er	is hem	nog	nooit	een ongeluk	overkomen.	nom-dat verb
	there	is him	yet	never	an accident	happened
	'He has never had an accident so far.'

b'.

[ti Een ongeluk overkomen]j is hemi nog nooit tj.

The acceptability contrast between the two primed examples in (357) can probably be attributed to the fact that Standard Dutch does not allow the object of a transitive verb to scramble across the subject, while is quite normal for the object to precede the subject in clauses headed by nom-dat verbs; cf. Section 2.1.3. This contrast can therefore be taken as support for the remnant VP-topicalization approach.

[+] 2. Te-infinitives

Subsection A has shown that topicalization of te-infinitival clauses is normally at least somewhat marked. The same seems to hold for te-infinitival complements of the semi-aspectual verbs like zitten'to sit'. As in perfect and passive constructions, the direct object of the main verb may be taken along with VP-topicalization or be stranded in the middle field, depending on whether it expresses "new" or presupposed information. Judgments on the primed examples seem to vary from speaker to speaker and range from marked to ungrammatical; the examples seem to improve if some element in the middle field of the clause can be assigned emphatic accent: cf. ?Te lezen zit hij dat boek altijd hier.

358

a.	Hij	zit	hier	altijd	boeken	te lezen.
	he	sits	here	always	books	to read
	'He is always reading books here.'

a'.

[Boeken te lezen] zit hij hier altijd.

b.	Hij	zit	dat boek	altijd	hier	te lezen.
	he	sits	that book	always	here	to read
	'He is always reading that book here.'

b'.

[ti Te lezen] zit hij dat boeki altijd hier.

It seems that VP-topicalization of verbal projections headed by a te-infinitive exhibits more or less the same properties as topicalization of verbal projections headed by a past/passive participle, but we will not illustrate this here because all examples are minimally perceived as marked.

[+] 3. Bare infinitives

Topicalization of bare infinitival complements of non-main verbs like the aspectual verbs inchoative gaan'to go', komen'to come', and blijven'to stay' is easily possible. As in perfect and passive constructions, the direct object of the main verb may be taken along with VP-topicalization or be stranded in the middle field of the clause, depending on whether it expresses new or presupposed information.

359

a.	Hij	gaat	vandaag	bloemen	plukken.
	he	goes	today	flowers	pick
	'He is going to pick flowers today.'

a'.

[Bloemen plukken]i gaat hij vandaag ti.

b.	Hij	gaat	de bloemen	vandaag	plukken.
	he	goes	the flowers	today	pick
	'He is going to pick the flowers today.'

b'.

[tiPlukken]j gaat hij de bloemeni vandaag tj.

It seems that the remnant VP-topicalization approach is also descriptively adequate for cases of this type. The examples in (360) first show that elements such as the complementives paars and in zijn spaarpot, which are normally not scrambled, are taken along by the preposed VP. The doubly-primed examples improve a little bit if the complementive is assigned emphatic stress.

360

a.	Hij	gaat	het hek	paars	verven.
	he	goes	the gate	purple	paint
	'He is going to paint the gate purple.'

a'.

paars verven gaat hij het hek.

a''.

Verven gaat hij het hek paars.

b.	Hij	gaat	het geld	in zijn spaarpot	stoppen.
	he	goes	the money	in his money.box	put
	'He is going to put the money in his money box.'

b'.

In zijn spaarpot stoppen gaat hij het geld.

b''.

Stoppen gaat hij het geld in zijn spaarpot.

Because the direct objects originate as logical subjects of the complementives, the singly-primed examples also show that VP-topicalization may take along some VP-internal element while stranding other VP-internal elements (here: the direct object) in the middle field of the clause. This is shown in the simplified structures of these examples in (361).

361

[[small clausetiPaars] verven]j gaat hij het hekitj.

[[small clauseti In zijn spaarpot] stoppen]j gaat hij het gelditj.

A similar apparent VP-split can be shown by means of the double object construction in (362b): while the indirect object is stranded in the middle field of the clause, the direct object is still part of the topicalized VP.

362

a.	De gemeente	gaat	de koning	volgende week	een concert	aanbieden.
	the municipality	goes	the King	next week	a concert	prt.-offer
	'The municipality is going to offer the King a concert next week.'

[ti Een concert aanbieden]j gaat de gemeente de koningi volgende week tj.

Example (363) provides one more example with the verb beveiligen'to safeguard' that selects a direct and a prepositional object: in the primed example the PP-object is taken along under VP-topicalization, while the direct object is stranded.

363

a.	Hij	gaat	zijn huis	snel	tegen inbraak	beveiligen.
	he	goes	his house	soon	against burglary	safeguard
	'He is going to safeguard his house against burglary soon.'

[ti Tegen inbraak beveiligen]j gaat hij zijn huisi snel tj.

The fact that stranded prepositions cannot be part of the preposed VP is again potentially problematic for the remnant VP-topicalization approach, but we have already mentioned that this is in fact expected under some more recent hypotheses concerning the nature of PP-complements.

364

a.	Hij	gaat	er	niet	op	wachten.
	he	goes	there	not	for	wait
	'He is not going to wait for it.'

Wachten gaat hij er niet op.

b'.

Op wachten gaat hij er niet.

The examples in (365) show that indefinite subjects can only marginally be part of topicalized VPs if the main verb is monadic, and the examples in (366) show that in the case of dyadic verbs we find again a contrast in this respect between transitive and unaccusative (nom-dat) verbs.

365

a.	Er	komen	volgende week	kinderen spelen.	intransitive
	there	come	next week	children play
	'Children are going to play here next week.'

a'.

[Kinderen spelen]i komen (er) volgende week ti.

b.	Er	gaan	daardoor	patiënten	sterven.	unaccusative
	there	go	by.that	patients	die
	'Patients are going to die because of that.'

b'.

[Patiënten sterven]i gaan (er) daardoor ti.

366

a.	Er	gaat	nooit	een buitenlander	die derby	winnen.	transitive
	there	goes	never	a foreigner	that derby	win
	'A foreigner is never going to win that derby.'

a'.

[Een buitenlander ti winnen]j gaat [die (derby)]i nooit tj.

b.	Er	gaat	hem	iets naars	overkomen.	nom-dat verb
	there	goes	him	something nasty	happen
	'Something nasty is going to happen to him.'

b'.

[ti Iets naars overkomen]j gaat hemi niet tj.

The examples above make it clear that VP-topicalization of bare infinitives exhibits more or less the same behavior as VP-topicalization of past/passive participles.

[+] 4. A special case

The examples in (367) provide a special case of VP-topicalization: these examples show that VP-topicalization can also occur if there is no non-main verb, but that in the resulting structure the verb-second position must be filled by the "dummy" verb doen'to do'. As the second position of the clause can only be occupied by finite verbs, tense and agreement cannot be expressed by the main verb but must be transferred to a finite form of doen. We refer the reader to Section 6.4.3 for more discussion of this "dummy" use of doen.

367

a.	Hij	verkoopt	zijn postzegels	beslist	niet.
	he	sells	his stamps	definitely	not
	'He definitely won't sell his stamps.'

a'.		[ti	Verkopen]j	doet	hij	zijn postzegelsi	beslist	niet tj.
		[ti	sell	does	he	his stamps	definitely	not

b.	Hij	verzamelt	geen postzegels	meer.
	he	collects	no stamps	any.more
	'He doesn't collect stamps any more.'

b'.		[Postzegels	verzamelen]i	doet	hij	niet	meer ti.
		stamps	collect	does	he	not	any.more

[+] 5. VP-topicalization and left dislocation

This subsection has provided a discussion of VP-topicalization based on Den Besten & Webelhuth's (1987) remnant VP-topicalization approach, according to which VP-topicalization can be preceded by scrambling of VP-internal material. The attractive appeal of this approach is that it immediately accounts for the fact that the elements stranded in the middle field of the clause can be semantically licensed by the verb heading the VP in clause-initial position, as these stranded elements are base-generated within this VP. The fact that the noun phrase dat boek in (368a) is interpreted as the theme argument of lezen'to read' is simply due to the fact that this thematic role is assigned to the position occupied by its trace ti, that is, the position originally held by this noun phrase. The two examples in (368) therefore do not differ in any crucial way when it comes to the assignment of thematic roles.

368

a.	[VPti	Gelezen]j	heeft	hij	dat boeki	nog	nooit tj.
	[VPti	read	has	he	that book	yet	never
	'He has never read that book yet.'

b.	[VP	Boeken	gelezen]i	heeft	hij	nog	nooit ti.
	[VP	books	read	has	he	yet	never
	'He has never read books yet.'

All acceptable VP-topicalization constructions discussed in the previous subsections alternate with left-dislocation constructions; the addition of the resumptive pronoun dat'that' never affects the acceptability judgments given in the previous subsection for the topicalization construction. This is illustrated in (369) for the examples in (368).

369

a.	[VPti	Gelezen],	dat	heeft	hij	dat boeki	nog nooit tj.
	[VPti	read	that	has	he	that book	yet never
	'He has never read that book yet.'

b.	[Boeken	gelezen],	dat	heeft	hij	nog nooit.
	books	read	that	has	he	yet never
	'He has never read books yet.'

Such left-dislocation constructions potentially undermine the argument in favor of the remnant VP-topicalization approach based on the assignment of thematic roles because they may force us to introduce some special mechanism to account for the fact that the "stranded" elements are interpreted as part of the clause-external, left-dislocated VP. So, if we introduce a special mechanism to account for the fact that the noun phrase dat boek'that book' in (369a) is interpreted as the direct object of the participle gelezen, we do not have to appeal to scrambling in order to account for the fact that the same holds for example (368a). It should be noted, however, that there are also proposals according to which left-dislocation is simply a special case of topicalization; in such analyses, which will be discussed in Section 14.2, sub VII and Section 14.2, sub VIII, the argument based on the assignment of thematic roles can probably be maintained in full force.
Moreover, much is still not well-understood. Müller (1998:221), for instance, approvingly cites unpublished work by Truckenbrodt that shows that German behaves more in accordance with what is predicted by Den Besten & Webelhuth's (1987) proposal in allowing constructions like (369b), in which the left dislocated phrase is a "full" VP, but prohibiting constructions like (369a), in which the left-dislocated phrase is a remnant VP. In fact, some speakers report the same for cases in which a bare infinitival complement is topicalized/left-dislocated. The examples in (370a) first show that topicalization is fully acceptable to all speakers of Dutch, whereas the corresponding left-dislocation construction (370b) seems degraded. Note further the left dislocation becomes acceptable to all speakers if we insert the "dummy" verb doen; the topicalization construction, on the other hand, is not compatible with doen in Standard Dutch.

370

a.	Lezen	gaat	hij	die boeken	niet	(*doen).
	read	goes	he	those books	not	do
	'He isn't going to read those books.'

b.	Lezen,	dat	gaat	hij	die boeken	niet	??(doen).
	read	that	goes	he	those books	not	do
	'He isn't going to read those books.'

Second, the examples in (371) show that most speakers consider left dislocation at least marginally acceptable if the preposed VP contains the direct object (see Odijk 1995), although they may still prefer the addition of the "dummy" verb doen. Adding doen to the topicalization construction is impossible. For completeness' sake, note that (371a) can be construed as a topic drop construction, provided that the phrase boeken lezen is followed by an intonation break.

371

a.	Boeken	lezen	gaat	hij	niet	(*doen).
	books	read	goes	he	not	do
	'He isn't going to read books.'

b.	Boeken	lezen,	dat	gaat	hij	niet	?(doen).
	books	read	that	goes	he	not	do
	'He isn't going to read books.'

VP-topicalization constructions such as (372) with a finite form of "dummy" doen'to do' in second position do not seem to raise similar restrictions as constructions with a non-main verb: the two left-dislocation constructions in (372) seem to be equally acceptable for most speakers.

372

a.	Verkopen	doet	hij	zijn postzegels	beslist	niet.
	sell	does	he	his stamps	definitely	not
	'He is definitely not selling his stamps .'

a'.	Verkopen,	dat	doet	hij	zijn postzegels	beslist	niet.
	sell	that	does	he	his stamps	definitely	not
	'He is definitely not selling his stamps.'

b.	Postzegels	verzamelen	doet	hij	niet	meer.
	stamps	collect	does	he	not	any.more
	'He doesn't collect stamps anymore.'

b'.	Postzegels	verzamelen,	dat	doet	hij	niet	meer.
	stamps	collect	that	does	he	not	any.more
	'He doesn't collect stamps anymore.'

The discussion above shows that more research is needed in order to clarify the relation between VP-topicalization and left-dislocation, as well as its implications for the remnant VP-topicalization approach adopted in the discussion above. We refer the reader to Müller (1998) for additional arguments in favor of this approach, and Haider (1990) and Fanselow (2002) for arguments against it based on German.

[+] D. Conclusion

The previous subsections have shown that, broadly speaking, it is possible to topicalize finite clauses. Infinitival clauses exhibit a more varied behavior: om + te-infinitivals seem to resist topicalization, while topicalization of bare infinitivals is fully acceptable; judgments on topicalization of te-infinitivals seem to vary from speaker to speaker but these topicalizations are normally considered marginal, or marked at least. VP-topicalization, that is, topicalization of the complements of non-main verbs, is possible if these are headed by a past/passive participle or a bare infinitive, and again marked in the case of te-infinitives. To our knowledge there are no theoretical proposals that aim at accounting for this pattern.
We also investigated whether the topicalization constructions discussed in the previous subsections alternate with left-dislocation constructions, since it is often claimed that the former are actually derived from the latter by deletion of the resumptive element. This claim is not fully supported by the empirical facts, which are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Topicalization and left dislocation of clauses and other verbal projections

		topicalization	left dislocation
finite	argument (SU, DO) argument (PP)	✓ *	✓ ✓
	adverbial adverbial (conditional)	✓ ✓	* ✓
infinitival	om + te-infinitive	*	✓
	te-infinitives	?	✓
	bare infinitives	✓	✓
VP- topicalization	past/passive participle	✓	✓
	te-infinitival	?	?
	bare infinitival (full) bare infinitival (remnant)	✓ ✓	✓ ?

[+] VII. Some differences between English and Dutch topicalization

English topicalization and Dutch topicalization seem to differ in various non-trivial respects. First consider the English examples in (373). The (a)-examples show that while wh-movement of the interrogative object which book triggers subject-verb inversion (or do-support if there is no auxiliary verb) in main clauses, topicalization of the direct object this book does not. The (b)-examples show that while wh-phrases like which book cannot co-occur with a complementizer in embedded clauses, topicalized phrases can although the result is marginal for some speakers. Note that whereas the wh-phrase is normally assumed to precede the empty complementizer position, the topicalized phrase must follow the complementizer.

373

Which book should I read?

a'.

This book, you should read.

I wonder [which book (*that) I should read].

b'.

I believe [that this book you should read].

Chomsky (1977) proposed that topicalization in English is like question formation in that it is derived by means of wh-movement (but see Baltin 1982 and Lasnik & Saito 1992 for alternative proposals). His analysis is given in a slightly adapted form as (373), where "Topic" refers to the topicalized phrase, which is associated to the following clause by being coindexed with a phonetically empty operator that is wh-moved into clause-initial position.

374

Topici [CP OPi C [TP .... ti ....]]

If we assume that the topicalized phrase indicated by "Topic" is a sentence-external element, the structural representation in (374) is able to account for a number of characteristic properties of Dutch topicalization. First, the Dutch counterparts of the (a)-examples in (373) given in (375) show that Dutch topicalization behaves like question formation in that it obligatorily triggers subject-verb inversion.

375

a.		Welk boeki	moet	ik ti	lezen?
		which book	must	I	read

b.		Dit boeki [CP OPi	moet	je ti	lezen].
		this book	must	you	read

Second, topicalization exhibits the typical qualities of wh-movement: example (376) shows that it is not clause-bound but nevertheless island-sensitive in that it cannot be extracted from an embedded question or an adjunct clause.

376

a.		Dit boeki [CP OPi	denk	ik [CP	dat	ik ti	moet lezen]].
		this book	think	I	that	I	must read

b.	*	Dit boeki [CP OPi	vraag	ik	me	af [CP	of	ik ti	moet	lezen]].
		this book	wonder	I	refl	prt.	if	I	must	read

c.	*	Dit boeki [CP OPi	huil	ik [CP	omdat	ik ti	moet	lezen]].
		this book	cry	I	because	I	must	read

Third, the examples in (377) show that Dutch topicalization differs from question formation in that it is categorically rejected in embedded clauses (contrary to what has been shown for English in the (b)-examples in (373)). This would follow immediately if we assume that the topicalization structure in (374) cannot be embedded: this is illustrated in (377b) for an embedded clause with the finite verb in clause-final position and in (377b') for an embedded clause with verb-second (which is an acceptable option in German).

377

a.		Ik	vraag	me	af	[welk boek	(of)	ik ti	moet	lezen].
		I	wonder	refl	prt.	which book	comp	I	must	read

b.	*	Ik	denk	[<(dat)>	dit boeki	(<dat>)	je ti	moet	lezen].
		I	think	that	this book	that	you	must	read

b'.	*	Ik	denk [dit boeki	moet	je ti	lezen].
		I	think this book	must	you	read

The analysis in (374) treats topicalization in essentially the same way as the left-dislocation constructions in (378); the only difference is that topicalization involves a phonetically empty operator or, alternatively, derives it from examples like (378) by deletion of the phonetic content of the wh-moved element.

378

a.	Dit boeki [CP	dati	moet	je ti	lezen]].	cf. (375b)
	this book	that	must	you	read
	'This book you should read it.'

b.	Dit boeki	[dati	denk	ik	[dat	ik ti	moet lezen]].	cf. (376a)
	this book	that	think	I	that	I	must read
	'This book, I think I should read it.'

The strongest hypothesis would therefore be that left dislocation of the type in (378) and topicalization alternate freely. This hypothesis does not seem to be tenable, however, given that there are certain differences between the two constructions. The examples in (379), for instance, show that while topicalization of quantified expressions like iedereen'everyone' and niemand'no one' can easily be realized, they cannot occur in left-dislocation constructions. This requires the additional ad hoc stipulation that the empty operator and the overt pronoun differ in that only the latter prohibits a quantified antecedent; we refer the reader to Section 14.2 for more examples.

379

a.	Iedereeni	[OPi/*diei	heb	ik ti	gezien	(behalve Peter)].
	everyone	OP/them	have	I	seen	except Peter
	'I have seen everyone (except Peter).'

b.	Niemandi	[OPi/*diei	heb	ik ti	gezien (behalve Peter)].
	no.one	OP/them `have	I	seen	except Peter
	'I have seen no one (except Peter).'

Example (380) further shows that the analysis in (374) requires that we assume that the wh-moved empty operator cannot strand a preposition. This is again ad hoc since examples like (380b) show that empty operators are normally able to do this; see Section A6.5, sub IVA for an extensive discussion of such constructions.

380

a.	Deze schoeneni	[daari/*OPi	voetbalt	Peter [ti	mee]].
	these shoes	there/OP	plays.soccer	Peter	with
	'These shoes, Peter plays soccer with them.'

b.	Deze schoeneni	zijn	zeer geschikt [OPi	om PRO [ti	mee]	te	voetballen].
	these shoes	are	very suitable	comp	with	to	play.soccer
	'These shoes are very suitable suitable for playing soccer.'

The contrasts in (379) and (380) casts serious doubts on the analysis in (374), especially because they follow without much ado under the alternative analysis, according to which topicalization involves wh-movement of the topicalized phrase itself. The unacceptability of examples (381a'&b'), for example, can simply be accounted for by the independently motivated assumption that demonstrative pronouns like die normally cannot refer to quantified phrases (if we ignore so-called bound variable readings); cf. *Niemandi was aanwezig, maar diei werd niet gemist. And the contrast between the two (c)-examples follows from the well-established fact that prepositions can only be stranded if the PP undergoes R-pronominalization.

381

[Iedereeni heb ik ti gezien (behalve Peter)].

a'.

Iedereeni [diei heb ik ti gezien (behalve Peter)].

[Niemandi heb ik gezien (behalve Peter)].

b'.

Niemandi [diei heb ik gezien (behalve Peter)].

Deze schoeneni voetbalt Peter [ti mee]].

c'.

Deze schoeneni [daari voetbalt Peter [ti mee]].

Of course, rejection of (374) as the proper structural representation of topicalization constructions also has its problems. For example, it would result in the loss of the elegant account for the fact that the Dutch topicalization is a root phenomenon, that is, that it applies in main clauses only. For this reason, it seems premature to make a definitive choice between the two options and we therefore leave this issue to future research. The reader is referred to Section 14.2 for a more extensive discussion of left dislocation.

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Author(s): Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver

Category: Dutch Syntax

Keywords: AccentAdverbial ModifierAnticipatory PronounBare InfinitivalBridge VerbComplementiveEmbedded Verb-secondExpletiveFocusIntonationInversionModalParticiplePied PipingPreposition StrandingResumptive ProlepsisSentence AccentStrandingSubject-initialSubject-verb InversionTopic ShiftTopicalizationVerbVerb-secondVerb ClusterWh-movement

Version: 1.0, January 2016

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