I was taught to say "Bob went to the store", and never say "Bob, he went to the store." I have been hearing the latter construction a lot lately. Is it okay, now?
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2Really, in writing it's off when you punctuate it that way. However, in speaking, what we have is "Bob? He went to the store." "Me? I like spicy food." (Compare 'Moi, je" in French for emphasis.) – Yosef Baskin Apr 12 '20 at 15:54
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Why add "he" to the sentence? It adds no information and does not clarify any of the information already present. – Gary's Student Apr 12 '20 at 16:46
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1It's always been OK. – Hot Licks Apr 12 '20 at 16:55
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@YosefBaskin We don't have questions there when we speak. And so neither must we have question marks there in writing. The original punctuation is perfectly fine, perfectly common, and not off at all. – RegDwigнt Apr 12 '20 at 21:25
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@Gary'sStudent that is actually not true. But even if it were, then by the same token half of your comment must be deleted with no replacement. As indeed must be half of pretty much anything that you or I have ever said or will ever say under any circumstances ever. – RegDwigнt Apr 12 '20 at 21:28
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I come across it first time. Is it that the subject is "Bob, he"? – Ram Pillai Apr 13 '20 at 00:10
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Does “he” refer to “Bob”? – Caleb Apr 13 '20 at 02:36
3 Answers
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- Bob, he went to the store.
is an example of the syntactic construction called Left Dislocation,
derived from an original sentence
- Bob went to the store.
There is also Right Dislocation, as in
- He went to the store, Bob.
from the same source.
Dislocations like these are common devices for emphasizing certain words and de-emphasizing others, using the beginning and ending of a sentence as spotlights, depending on stress and intonation in context. They're perfectly good grammatical spoken English, but not so common in writing, except for reporting dialog.
John Lawler
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It should be noted that, in a vacuum, the last version would imply that you were talking to Bob, whereas, in a similar vacuum, the first implies that you are referring to Bob as the one who went to the store. But, of course, intonation and context can change these perceptions. – Hot Licks Apr 12 '20 at 18:28
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And, "Bob, he went to the store" is not derived from "Bob went to the store". Rather, "Bob," is prefixed to "He went to the store" to clarify who is being discussed. – Hot Licks Apr 12 '20 at 18:43
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1If you say so. Rather like wondering whether full reduplication is suffixing or prefixing. – John Lawler Apr 12 '20 at 21:15
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Are you conscious of hearing the type of dislocation present in "Anne's brother, he is the one who left." (found in the source you quote http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/Preliminarybufattenedlistoftransformations.pdf) irrespective of any preceding context? Do you, personally, find it in isolation at the beginning of someone's speech, when it can't be justified as "Anne's brother? He is the one who left." or something like that? If so, according to you, what is the particular idea not found in "Anne's brother is the one who left."? – LPH Apr 12 '20 at 23:25
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1Perhaps the most famous instance of this construction in literature—which appears in Conrad's Heart of Darkness—sets the proper name off from the following pronoun with an em dash rather than a comma: "Mistah Kurtz—he dead." Not that punctuation has anything to do with language. – Sven Yargs Apr 13 '20 at 00:19
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I can see how it could be used for "poetic" (?) purposes. Probably, a better way to punctuate it then would be: "Bob. He went to the store". Consider the following example:
"Captain Smith. He led the charge and saved the Queen. Her generals? They just stood there petrified".
So "Bob. He went to the store" sounds to me like: "It was Bob that went to the store", more or less.
Consider the full stop. With the comma, it seems hardly acceptable. (It's only an intuitive assertion from a non-native speaker of English)
Jules Cocovin
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It is more idiomatic to use a comma rather than a period in the examples you give. – Hot Licks Apr 12 '20 at 16:55
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1@Jules, I think subject doubling serves the purpose to emphasise what the subject did compared with other referents, as in "As for Bob, he...", but in this case a comma seems more appropriate than a full stop since it reflects a short prosodic interval. – Apr 12 '20 at 17:07
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I went with the full stop because I read "Bob." as a nominal sentence meaning something along the lines of: "This is Bob in his entirety as far as both mind and body go." The other option I considered was the eM dash. But that may be my native tongue speaking inwhich the phrase in question it's not so uncommon. – Jules Cocovin Apr 12 '20 at 19:31
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You could certainly find suspension points or an exclamation point ("Captain Smith! He led the charge and saved the Queen. Her generals? They just stood there petrified".) and there isn't a great difference. Why not a full stop, which gives the utterance the import of a recapitulating statement without the exclamatory turn? – LPH Apr 12 '20 at 23:40
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I have never heard anyone speaking English use this form. It is a case of redundance that you find in French, and which some of the French people do not consider as good French.
Such redundance as one finds in Bob Dylan's work are barely acceptable on the grounds of poetic licence in English (For the times they are a-changin'). This is just as in the following dialogue.
— Do you know if Bob comes back before 12 o'clock?
— I don't know because Bob he went to the store.
You do not find that in the spoken language, not to speak of the written one. It is obviously a case of words being used as useless filler and in my opinion the practice of this redundance should not be introduced in a language, any language.
LPH
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Yours is a prescriptive stance, but this phenomenon, also known, as "subject doubling" is attested in several languages apart from French, so it deserves linguistic examination as for its rise and motivation beyond normative parameters. – Apr 12 '20 at 16:55
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@HotLicks To a point, yes, but I won't pretend that I've absorbed the whole linguistic lot on this question of redundance. For my part, I do not use it in French nor in English. I can assert also that in all my readings in English I've never found it and in all the conversations in English between well spoken people (and others) that I ever heard I never heard it either. – LPH Apr 12 '20 at 17:01
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@HotLicks Of course, in the reproduction of dialectal (not to say substandard English) it becomes legitimate to use these forms (Dar's not a gal like Sally. De old man he's gone down to town—) but we are not concerned with legitimizing such language here, – LPH Apr 12 '20 at 17:16
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1@LPH So you think this is only a site for prescription and not for description of linguistic phenomena? – Apr 12 '20 at 17:34
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@Nico No, what 's making you think so? Description goes on all the time on the present site and that's mostly what I do, except for some rare personnal opinions that I always signal as mine. In this very question, I think that my saying that this redundance is not found is nothing else than describing the actual situation; I'll repeat it, Ihave never heard it, either in AmE or in BrE. – LPH Apr 12 '20 at 23:02
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@LPH Your personal opinion is fine! I was referring to this bit " in my opinion the practice of this redundance should not be introduced in a language, any language". This is prescriptive. – Apr 13 '20 at 08:26
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@RogerRobey I believe you, but I think that this is recent; until possibly no more than a few years back nobody would say that. Anyway, I think it is awful, as some other people do call it also, childish, – LPH Apr 13 '20 at 18:16