A Remark on Persian Left-dislocation and the Related Challenges for Role and Reference

This article, first, is concerned with the study of left-dislocation and its information-structural implications in Persian. Left-dislocation in Persian is syntactically manifested by the topical and contrastive left-dislocation constructions. The double external possession construction as an instantiation of the topical left-dislocation is characterized by the sequence of two external possessors in the left-periphery of the core. The contrastive left-dislocation construction is distinguished from the topical one via the focality and position of the left-dislocated element figuring inside the clause. Each construction has specific syntactic and information-structural properties that the layered structure of the clause in the present RRG, as the framework of this study, fails to account for. Incorporating the concepts of discourse saliency and contrast as explicit selection among alternatives into the information-structural lexicon in RRG, the author of the present study tries to extend the scope of the left-periphery in the theory so as to increase its typological adequacy.