Right dislocation in Cantonese : an emotion-intensifying device

Abstract

This paper explores the emotive function of Cantonese right dislocation based on language samples in a large spoken Cantonese database. Right dislocation is found to be highly associated with emotion expressions. In particular, explicit emotion words always appear in the first part of right dislocation. We argue that right dislocation is used as a focus marking device for highlighting emotion information and intensifying emotions. Therefore, right dislocation can serve as one of the linguistic cues for identifying implicit emotions.