Left dislocation in Dutch

Abstract Left Dislocation in Dutch is still poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear why speakers of Dutch use this construction and which factors influence its use. To obtain more insight in the function and use of Left Dislocation in Dutch, we elicited narratives from 30 adult speakers of Dutch and carried out an analysis of the use of Left Dislocation constructions in these narratives. Our analysis revealed that neither the introduction of new referents, nor the expression of a contrast between two referents, nor the marking of a shifted topic is able to explain all uses of Left Dislocation in these narratives. We speculate that the function of Left Dislocation in Dutch is to mark a referent as a potential topic for the further discourse.