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 BaskinCommented Apr 12, 2020 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 StudentCommented Apr 12, 2020 at 16:46
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1It's always been OK.– Hot LicksCommented Apr 12, 2020 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.– RegDwigнtCommented Apr 12, 2020 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.– RegDwigнtCommented Apr 12, 2020 at 21:28
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3 Answers
- 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.
answered Apr 12, 2020 at 17:48
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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. Commented Apr 12, 2020 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. Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 18:43
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1If you say so. Rather like wondering whether full reduplication is suffixing or prefixing. Commented Apr 12, 2020 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 www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/…) 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."?– LPHCommented Apr 12, 2020 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. Commented Apr 13, 2020 at 0:19
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)
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It is more idiomatic to use a comma rather than a period in the examples you give. Commented Apr 12, 2020 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.– user373710Commented Apr 12, 2020 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. Commented Apr 12, 2020 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?– LPHCommented Apr 12, 2020 at 23:40
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.
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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.– user373710Commented Apr 12, 2020 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.– LPHCommented Apr 12, 2020 at 17:01
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1@LPH So you think this is only a site for prescription and not for description of linguistic phenomena?– user373710Commented Apr 12, 2020 at 17:34