Dislocation Types in Emilian

Dislocated structures in Emilian show a puzzling gradient patterns, where certain preposition can be deleted, certain others can but result in progressively less acceptable sentences, and certain others cannot. This paper explores 3 possible analyses of this phenomenon, based respectively on phonology, morphology and pragmatics. Not only language-internal phenomena are considered, but also sociolinguistic factors and the language contact situation between Emilian and Standard Italian. Despite not being completely unproblematic, the pragmatic hypothesis is shown to make the best predictions.