Regard the following sentence:

• Bob's a mighty fine guy.

The Subject of this sentence, clearly, is Bob. Now consider this one:

• Bob, he's a mighty fine guy.

Here Bob has been shunted to the left of the clause. The word Bob is now like an announcement of the topic of the rest of the sentence. This is known as a left dislocation. Some constituent of the sentence has been dislocated to the left of the nucleus of the clause and then a co-referential pronoun, he, has been used to plug that gap. The grammatical Subject of this clause is now the word he.

Left disclocated elements do not always represent Subjects. Consider the following joke:

• Men, you can't live with them and you can't kill them.

Here men is coreferential with the object of the preposition with. Again, it announces the topic of the sentence.

We can also have right dislocations too:

• He's a mighty fine guy, Bob.

Here the Subject has been dislocated to the right of the clause. Right disclocations tend to affirm the identity of some co-referential element in the sentence, in this case the pronoun he.

The Original Poster's Question

Is she staying for supper, your mum?

This is a perfectly grammatical sentence. It is an example of a right dislocation. Perfectly grammatical though it is, we only tend to see this sort of construction in spoken English or quite informal writing.

Here the right dislocation may be serving two purposes. Firstly, just saying Is she staying for dinner? might sound a bit terse - possibly even a bit like a challenge. The informality of the construction makes it more friendly.

Secondly, the repetition of your Mum ties the reply back to the first speaker's original remark, giving a sense of feedback to the Original speaker. In real life when we converse, we rarely just give one line answers or questions. Turn taking behaviour tends to require us to break our turns into a minumum of two parts. The first usually acknowledges the previous speaker's input, the second contains our own input. Here these have been reversed. The question represents the second speaker's input. The right dislocated element represents the acknowledgement of the original speaker's input. This, again, makes the whole exchange more friendly.

Regard the following sentence:

• Bob's a mighty fine guy.

The Subject of this sentence, clearly, is Bob. Now consider this one:

• Bob, he's a mighty fine guy.

Here Bob has been shunted to the left of the clause. The word Bob is now like an announcement of the topic of the rest of the sentence. This is known as a left dislocation. Some constituent of the sentence has been dislocated to the left of the nucleus of the clause and then a co-referential pronoun, he, has been used to plug that gap. The grammatical Subject of this clause is now the word he.

Left disclocated elements do not always represent Subjects. Consider the following joke:

• Men, you can't live with them and you can't kill them.

Here men is coreferential with the object of the preposition with. Again, it announces the topic of the sentence.

We can also have right dislocations too:

• He's a mighty fine guy, Bob.

Here the Subject has been dislocated to the right of the clause. Right disclocations tend to affirm the identity of some co-referential element in the sentence, in this case the pronoun he.

The Original Poster's Question

Is she staying for supper, your mum?

This is a perfectly grammatical sentence. It is an example of a right dislocation. Perfectly grammatical though it is, we only tend to see this sort of construction in spoken English or quite informal writing.

Regard the following sentence:

• Bob's a mighty fine guy.

The Subject of this sentence, clearly, is Bob. Now consider this one:

• Bob, he's a mighty fine guy.

Here Bob has been shunted to the left of the clause. The word Bob is now like an announcement of the topic of the rest of the sentence. This is known as a left dislocation. Some constituent of the sentence has been dislocated to the left of the nucleus of the clause and then a co-referential pronoun, he, has been used to plug that gap. The grammatical Subject of this clause is now the word he.

Left disclocated elements do not always represent Subjects. Consider the following joke:

• Men, you can't live with them and you can't kill them.

Here men is coreferential with the object of the preposition with. Again, it announces the topic of the sentence.

We can also have right dislocations too:

• He's a mighty fine guy, Bob.

Here the Subject has been dislocated to the right of the clause. Right disclocations tend to affirm the identity of some co-referential element in the sentence, in this case the pronoun he.

The Original Poster's Question

Is she staying for supper, your mum?

This is a perfectly grammatical sentence. It is an example of a right dislocation. Perfectly grammatical though it is, we only tend to see this sort of construction in spoken English or quite informal writing.

Regard the following sentence:

• Bob's a mighty fine guy.

The Subject of this sentence, clearly, is Bob. Now consider this one:

• Bob, he's a mighty fine guy.

Here Bob has been shunted to the left of the clause. The word Bob is now like an announcement of the topic of the rest of the sentence. This is known as a left dislocation. Some constituent of the sentence has been dislocated to the left of the nucleus of the clause and then a co-referential pronoun, he, has been used to plug that gap. The grammatical Subject of this clause is now the word he.

Left disclocated elements do not always represent Subjects. Consider the following joke:

• Men, you can't live with them and you can't kill them.

Here men is coreferential with the object of the preposition with. Again, it announces the topic of the sentence.

We can also have right dislocations too:

• He's a mighty fine guy, Bob.

Here the Subject has been dislocated to the right of the clause. Right disclocations tend to affirm the identity of some co-referential element in the sentence, in this case the pronoun he.

The Original Poster's Question

Is she staying for supper, your mum?

This is a perfectly grammatical sentence. It is an example of a right dislocation. Perfectly grammatical though it is, we only tend to see this sort of construction in spoken English or quite informal writing.

Here the right dislocation may be serving two purposes. Firstly, just saying Is she staying for dinner? might sound a bit terse - possibly even a bit like a challenge. The informality of the construction makes it more friendly.

Secondly, the repetition of your Mum ties the reply back to the first speaker's original remark, giving a sense of feedback to the Original speaker. In real life when we converse, we rarely just give one line answers or questions. Turn taking behaviour tends to require us to break our turns into a minumum of two parts. The first usually acknowledges the previous speaker's input, the second contains our own input. Here these have been reversed. The question represents the second speaker's input. The right dislocated element represents the acknowledgement of the original speaker's input. This, again, makes the whole exchange more friendly.