I am researching syntactic idiosyncrasies of verbal communication and am interested in a construction in which a noun is reiterated with a pronoun.
As children, we're all taught to avoid constructions that introduce a subject and follow it with a pronoun. But while this is forbidden in prescribed grammar, it is also ubiquitous in spoken English.
My friend Jane, she ate half the cake in one sitting.
This example is a simple one, where the speaker places the pronoun "she" after "my friend." But this construction appears more frequently in complex forms. It's not hard to find examples in speeches by public figures.
They’re saying the obstructionists, how do we get them to vote for us?
In this example quote, the message conveyed is as follows.
They're saying, how do we get the obstructionists to vote for us?
This is not as simple as the example in the question, where the pronoun comes immediately after the noun. But the concept is the same, in that the noun is introduced first, and then referred to with a pronoun later. It seems similar to the difference between these sentences.
The obstructionists, they will vote for us.
The obstructionists will vote for us.
Is there any term for this bit of verbal linguistic flair or any sort of analysis that explains why it is common in speech and taboo in prescriptive grammar?
