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I've noticed that in certain parts of England, U.K., people would add pronouns to the end of their sentences when speaking. I'm from the U.S. but I have a couple of friends from West Yorkshire and Liverpool specifically and I've noticed they speak and type in this manner sometimes:

Made my morning that

One of them said this when his favorite sports team won a match in the morning. So logically this just means "that made my morning", without the dialect added onto it.

Another time we were eating Chinese food and he said:

F*cking good this

Which I presume it means "this is f*cking good" (the food).

I know that there are various dialects across the U.K. But I would like to know more information about this specific mannerism. I'm wondering where did the manner of adding a pronoun to the end of a sentence come from? And why do they do it and how'd it start? Which dialect is this to be specific? Thank you.

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  • could do without the "why" (this). Langauge evolution, much like biological evolution, is unguided and without an endgoal Mar 11, 2021 at 4:34
  • [It] made my morning, that [did]. [It's] effing good, this [is]. You're sweet, you are. It's a way of emphasising the statement by repeating the affirmation. Mar 11, 2021 at 9:07

2 Answers 2

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It looks like right dislocation to me, just with utterances without an explicit subject. (It’s not always a pronoun and the concept itself isn’t specific to England.)

Here’s a paper with a similar example:

Situation: A has told B about how he slammed his finger in a car door.
B: Agonizing, that. Car doors are always a problem.

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  • Yes, that must be correct. It might be worth saying that it it not a matter of local dialect or even any particular language. Such utterances are exclamations. The speaker (and you will not find it written, except in the context of poetry. I prefer to call it a case of 'displacement', even though 'dislocation' is the term used. It puts the entire weight on the AGONY. 'That' follows to pinpoint the agony. You can also find even the pronoun absent. You tell me about something dreadful that happened to you. I say "How dreadful!".
    – Tuffy
    Mar 11, 2021 at 8:22
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Growing up in Yorkshire, I was accustomed to emphasising the main thought about something by stating it and then referring to the something by using this or that.

Looking at a three-legged dog the main thought to be expressed is that it is unusual. Then comes the indicative reference to the thing that is unusual: “Unusual dog, that.” or “Unusual, that dog.

Wikipedia has relevant accounts that put my childhood experience in wider context:

English is a so called subject-prominent language, in which the subject is usually prominent. Another type of language is topic-prominent:

Although English is a subject-prominent language, it does have ways of producing topic prominent sentences. These include terms like “as for” and “regarding”, as well as few structural rearrangements such as the passive voice, fronting and clefting.

Fronting refers to those odd sentences you come across sometimes where the topic has been moved to the front. They feel awkward because English is a subject-prominent language but their subject doesn’t come first.

A couple of examples with the subject highlighted in yellow, and the topic highlighted in green:

Chocolate, I like.

Americans, he can’t stand.

Wikipedia

This movement so as to emphasise the topic may be left or right (as with my Yorkshire dog example).

There are two types of dislocation: right dislocation, in which the constituent is postponed (as in the above example), or a left dislocation, in which it is advanced. Right dislocation often occurs with a clarifying afterthought: They went to the store is a coherent sentence, but Mary and Peter is added afterward to clarify exactly who they are. By contrast, left dislocation is like clefting: it can be used to emphasize or define a topic. For example, the sentence This little girl, the dog bit her has the same meaning as The dog bit this little girl but it emphasizes that the little girl (and not the dog) is the topic of interest. One might expect the next sentence to be The little girl needs to see a doctor, rather than The dog needs to be leashed. This type of dislocation is a feature of topic-prominent languages.

Wikipedia

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