Sportscaster topicalization

[Benjamin Zimmer]

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