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Hi Everyone,I know I've raised this a few times, but I still keep seeing many examples on the net; here is yet another example from today's news:  "The woman that I mostly helped, she just went very pale...."Now, this is a direct quote, so I can see that changing the sentence isn't the point. However, this is the A-typical example I've been talking about in my previous posts on this topic. Journalists write like this all the time even when it's not a direct quote.If writing this sentence without it being a direct quote, I think it should read:     "This woman that I mostly helped went very pale."For what it's worth...Just sayin.

GPY · Accepted Answer

It is an acceptable conversational style. The part that I don't understand is "mostly".

BillJ · Answer

The woman that I mostly helped, she just went very pale....

This is a special kind of construction found in informal conversation called ‘left dislocation’, where there is an extra noun phrase located to the left of the main part of the clause, consisting of subject and predicate, which we call the nucleus. The extra NP serves as antecedent for the personal pronoun within the nucleus.

In your example the extra NP The woman that I mostly helped supplies the meaning for the subject pronoun “she” in the nucleus.

The basic non-dislocated counterpart would be The woman that I mostly helped just went very pale...."

Right dislocation is also possible, e.g. They seem very uncaring, her parents where the extra NP on the right is antecedent for the personal pronoun “they” in the nucleus.

Note that in dislocation, the NP placed to the left or right of the nucleus is set apart prosodically from the rest of the clause.

Incidentally, the use of the adverb "mostly" seems somewhat infelicitous.

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