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I am currently working on coding and standardizing the language of my community.

There is something we do when we speak, that so far I haven't encountered in the other languages that I've delved into, or in my linguistics and language studies.

We rarely ever conjugate a verb with a noun as a subject, we always just bring back the pronoun.

So for example, saying "the cat is here" would be unnatural, we would say "the cat it's here."

This is almost always the case!

"us we're hungry"

"the girl she's laughing"

"the door it's over there"

"the heat it was terrible"

etc.

We use it a bit less for the 3rd person plural, but still frequently.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? Do any other languages do this?

thanks! :)

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    I don't know a general answer, but this is a use of resumptive pronouns. (The article talks mostly about their use within relative clauses, but there is a mention of other uses at the end).
    – Colin Fine
    Apr 26, 2022 at 21:32
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    @ColinFine I don't think it is (though I am often wrong about these things). In English,, these sentences are left dislocations.
    – Araucaria - him
    Apr 26, 2022 at 23:46
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    @Araucaria-him - yes, that's a better answer. Why don't you make it an answer.
    – Colin Fine
    Apr 27, 2022 at 15:28
  • @ColinFine It might instead be a form of topicalisation. I don't know much about topic prominent languages! (and not that much about left-dislocation either!)
    – Araucaria - him
    Apr 27, 2022 at 15:34
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    We don't even know what language is being talked about, nor how it's being transcribed and translated. It's way too early to start labelling things.
    – jlawler
    Apr 27, 2022 at 15:46

2 Answers 2

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The questions examples are all topic-comment sentential-phrase pattern. Most languages other than English do this even more than English does, but as your examples demonstrate, it is grammatical in English too, especially in spoken language to call attention to something then start making an insightful observation of the called-out noun phrase. Spanish in particular uses the topic-comment sentential-phrase quite often.

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If anything, such usage is called "topicalization". Like in "The house, it is big", "The boss, he is rich". I think, English grammar requires a comma here. One can observe a similar thing in Russian, it also requires a comma.

It is not an unmarked speech though in both languages and can be used only in specific circumstances.

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