ON THE SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE OF SHIFTED ATTRIBUTIVES

The paper investigates constructions with unattached attributes. It is shown that unattached attributes cannot be traced to any other type of noun phrase or secondary predication. The paper establishes different types of unattached attributes (postpositive, leftdislocated) and defines properties specific for every particular type of phrase and for the unattached attributes as a whole. Building on these properties, the syntactic structure of the unattached phrases is proposed and the nature of prosodic effects accompanying the unattachment phenomenon is explained.