I am of the opinion that truly non-informative uses of words must be demonstrated, that is, the null hypothesis should be that they carry a meaning at some level, even though it may be difficult to see it. Otherwise, we wouldn't use them. I generally agree with what has been said above; there is little semantic contribution in right-dislocated nouns (the technical term for the repetition of
det) and in questions formulated with
for noe, but there are clear pragmatic effects.
To take "
hva ble det for noe?" first: I tried to look up if someone had written about this "
for noe"-part, but I wasn't able to find anything so this bit will be based on my own intuitions. I can't help but notice the parallelism between similar questions such as:
1a) Hva er det for noe?
1b) Hva er det for en bil?
2a) Hvem er du for en?
2b) Hvem er du?
These questions cannot be answered in exactly the same ways. 2a) and 2b) are perhaps the most striking pair as the
for-phrase is in one and not the other. 2b) can be answered by giving your name while 2a) cannot. My impression is that "
for+generic noun" in this question type expresses that the speaker is asking about the very nature of the object or of the individual. The parallelism is not complete as I don't think it is possible to say "hvem er du for en professor?" (it sounds bad to me) but "hvem er du for en kar?" is fine. The pragmatic effect is perhaps not absolute, but the general idea remains the same: by using
for noe/for en in questions like this, the speaker signals more strongly that s/he is really has no clue about the category of the object or person. Some kind of emphasis perhaps, but there are several different ways to mark emphasis in language so I find it a bit imprecise.
As for
"det høres helt riktig ut, det", I was able to find an article by Borthen&Karagjosova 2021:
Pronominal right-dislocation in Norwegian. I skimmed through it and it seems that the construction is syntactically constrained (indirect objects are excluded) as well as being constrained by the surrounding discourse (the right-dislocated pronoun has to be a topic). The pragmatic effects range from "emphasis" to "mitigation" of the speaker's attitude to the content of the sentence and it can also have an effect on reference. A particularly telling example for this last point is shown below. In 3),
den refers to the actual viper in the context whereas in 4),
den refers to the species.
3A: Det der er en hoggorm.
3B: Nei. Den har et siksakband over ryggen.
4A: Det der er en hoggorm.
4B: Nei. Den har et siksakband over ryggen, den.
Anyway, to sum up, if I have understood things correctly, Borthen&Karagjosova would analyse "
det høres helt riktig ut, det" as a type of "emphasis". Not of the pronoun and its reference in itself, but more of the speaker's wish to draw the attention to the fact that there are other things that don't sound correct.
Opaque? Oh yes!
I suggest learning by doing
