Differentiating dislocations, topicalisation, and extraposition in Biblical Hebrew: Evidence from negation

Abstract

Left dislocation, right dislocation, topicalisation, and extraposition involve a constituent in a non-canonical position at the edge of the sentence. In Biblical Hebrew, the differentiation of these four constructions is complicated by two additional constructions. At the left edge of the sentence is a construction that is like topicalisation in that it has no resumptive element within the sentence although it apparently occurs outside of the left boundary of the matrix sentence. At the right edge of the sentence, we identify for the first time a comparable construction of “heavy extraposition” which is like extraposition in that it has no resumptive element within the sentence although it apparently occurs outside of the right boundary of the matrix sentence.

In this article, we examine the evidence that negation provides for differentiating the syntactic features of the six constructions. We present the data for negation involving each of these constructions with attention to the scope of negation as sentential negation or constituent negation (Snyman and Naudé 2003, Naudé and Rendsburg 2013). In particular, we examine the implications of negation for delimiting and defining the constructions, especially left dislocation and topicalisation, which are shown to involve important asymmetrical features. The facts about negated sentences provide important evidence that the presence (or absence) of resumption is critical to differentiating left dislocation and topicalisation (contra Westbury 2014, 2016). Negation thus provides important positive information for the syntactic structures of these six constructions and provides a crucial foundation for differentiating their functions with respect to information structure.