Sportscaster topicalization

[Patty Davies]

Hi Ben - yes, I had noticed this too.   I think it was a year ago when I
observed that Mary Carillo and John McEnroe (or Patrick McEnroe?) used the
topic as right-dislocated examples.  At the time, I thought they had been
coached by the network to announce that way.  I hadn't remembered the
announcing sounding like this previously.  If they hadn't both adopted this
style at the same time.......     We're a tennis-fan household :)

Patty

At 05:06 PM 7/2/05, you wrote:
>I'm not sure how much work has been done on sportscaster syntax, but on
>NBC's Wimbledon coverage I noticed some peculiar topicalizations from the
>announcer Mary Carillo. Like other sportscasters, Carillo often uses a
>comment-topic word order when topicalizing a player. A few examples where
>the topic is right-dislocated:
>
>      She wants to make this all offense, Davenport.
>      She wanted this one to be called out, Venus.
>      She did it in '99, Davenport.
>
>Sometimes it's a bit more elliptical:
>
>      Just not enough in there, Davenport.
>
>A related comment-topic order involves inverting the subject and
>predicate, usually around the copula:
>
>      Absolutely a tremendous player at the net, is Davenport.
>
>This might not be "predicate fronting" per se-- it's more like Carillo
>states the predicate elliptically and then realizes she needs to
>topicalize the player. The prosody is similar to the examples using right
>dislocation, with rising intonation at the end of the predicate and a
>pause before the copula.
>
>In baseball sportscasting one can often hear this type of inversion around
>the copula from Fox's Joe Buck. Buck will typically do this with
>predicative NPs or APs. I don't have actual examples from him, but these
>would be typical:
>
>      A five-time all-star, is Guerrero.
>      Quick on his feet, is Guerrero.
>      Batting .350, is Guerrero.
>
>I'm not sure if he'd do this with a predicative PP:
>
>      ?In a ten-game slump, is Guerrero.
>
>Note that these are prosodically different from more run-of-the-mill
>inversions involving locative predicates, e.g.:
>
>      Coming up to bat is Guerrero.
>      Now at the plate is Guerrero.
>
>Announcers like Carillo and Buck probably use further syntactic variations
>-- for instance, I think it may be possible to have right dislocation
>*and* a copula or dummy auxiliary:
>
>      ?He's a five-time all-star, is Guerrero.
>      ?He's batting .350, is Guerrero.
>      ?She wants to make this all offense, does Davenport.
>      ?She wanted this one to be called out, did Venus.
>
>Has anyone else noticed these constructions?
>
>
>
>--Ben Zimmer