Dislocation in Cantonese
Colloquial Cantonese often uses right dislocation when afterthoughts occur after completing a sentence. Because it is a pro-drop language, no pronoun is used when a subject is dislocated, leading to an appearance of changed word order. For instance, the normal word order is subject–verb–object (SVO):
王生 返 咗 屋企 。
Mr. Wong returned home.
Dislocation can result in the appearance of verb–object–subject (VOS) word order because no pronoun is used:
返 咗 屋企 喇 ， 王生 。
returned home, Mr. Wong.
At a deep level though, the sentence is still SVO but only appears to be VOS due to dislocation and pronoun dropping. Often a sentence-final particle (SFP) is required after the main clause, otherwise the sentence would sound strange or unacceptable. Right dislocation in Cantonese can occur with auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and sometimes subordinate clauses in addition to subjects.
Being a Chinese language, Cantonese is also a topic-prominent language and thus features left dislocation. For instance:
王生 已經 買 咗 奶 。
Mr. Wong already bought the milk.
Topicalization can make this sentence appear to be object–subject–verb (OSV):
奶 王生 已經 買 咗 。
the milk, Mr. Wong already bought .
Both left and right dislocation can even be featured in the same sentence:
奶 已經 買 咗 喇 ， 王生 。
the milk, already bought, Mr. Wong.
Read more about this topic: Dislocation (syntax)
Famous quotes containing the word dislocation:
“For, as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God, that makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the Whole,—re-attaching even artificial things, and violations of nature, to nature, by a deeper insight,—disposes very easily of the most disagreeable facts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)