In this article, we focus on relative clauses with an NP head that is not an argument in any clause. We call these constructions detached NPs with relative clauses, or DNP+RC constructions. These include both so-called right and left dislocations (RDs and LDs) and other types of detachments (Neveu 2010) which include a relative clause. We focus on their morphosyntactic and lexical characteristics and their treatment in interaction.

We show that DNP+RC constructions have varying lexico-syntactic manifestations depending on their syntactic and sequential environments. With close analysis of DNP+RC constructions in their local contexts, we show that they are responsive to local contingencies (cf. Pekarek Doehler 2011). It has been suggested LDs function to organize topics and information structure in English (Geluykens 1992: 53-66) and Italian (Duranti & Ochs 1979). Lambrecht (1994: 128–129) has proposed that LDs are topic expressions, i.e. their referents have a topic relation to the proposition. While Finnish detachments clearly serve functions that are relevant to information structure, they do not offer a regular escape valve for e.g. introducing new information. For that, they do not appear to be nearly as grammaticized or indeed frequent in Finnish as they are, for example in French, or even English (e.g. Pekarek Doehler 2011: 51). Neither do they serve a topicalizing function similar to the one described by Geluykens (1992) for English and Ashby (1988) and Horlacher & Müller (2005) for French. We show that instead, Finnish detachments function in formulation and negotiation of reference in a variety of ways.