Dutch argument doubling

Argument doubling, also known as (contrastive) left-dislocation, is common in spoken Dutch, but it is unclear exactly what triggers it. Earlier proposals in the literature showed that the construction is not used for marking contrast, and suggested it is used for marking shifted topics instead. However, the results from a Spoken Dutch Corpus study on argument doubling with proper nouns demonstrate that topic shift does not adequately characterize the construction’s function either. Further examination of our corpus data shows that at least for proper nouns, Dutch argument doubling mostly occurs when a new referent is introduced into the discourse, but that this referent does not necessarily become prominent in the discourse. We hypothesize that argument doubling is a way of giving speakers and/or hearers some extra time to establish and/or process the new discourse referent in the discourse, regardless of whether it will become a discourse-topic after its introduction.