What is the effect of the repeated (redundant?) "lui" in this passage?

Question

The following is a quote from a book I'm reading ¹:

Roxane est assise au fond de la classe et regarde par la fenêtre. La prof est en train de calmer une crise en avant. Le p’tit gars est à terre, pis y gueule, y grouille dans tous les sens. «Calme-toi, Kevin, calme-toi.» La prof essaie de le retenir, ça lui arrive souvent à lui depuis qu’sa mère est partie.

My best guess is that the second "à lui" is added for emphasis, but I'm not sure. I'm also guessing that it is redundant, but I'm not sure.

Questions:

1. Would this sentence be grammatically correct / acceptable if the first "lui" was removed?
2. Would this sentence be grammatically correct / acceptable if the "à lui" was removed?
3. What is the effect (emotional, register, semantic etc) of the three options (eg, a) as written, b) with the first "lui" removed, c) with the "à lui" removed)?

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_{1: Je voudrais qu'on m'efface by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, about 2/3s into chapter 2}

Answer 1

The verb arriver here is impersonal, it only exists in the third person singular: ça arrive, and if an indirect object is required this indirect object goes before the verb : ça m'arrive, ça t'arrive, ça lui arrive, etc..

1. La prof essaie de le retenir, ça arrive souvent depuis qu’sa mère est partie is a perfectly correct sentence, so is the indirect object absolutely needed here? I would say yes, because with only ça arrive souvent  we could hesitate on what ça represents: Kevin qui pique une crise, la prof qui essaie de le retenir/calmer, or both?

2. La prof essaie de le retenir, ça lui arrive souvent depuis qu’sa mère est partie is another perfectly correct sentence. But since lui is the indirect object pronoun for both masculine and feminine, as such we might hesitate as to what lui refers to: Kevin or la prof? Indeed, are we talking about Kevin getting in a tantrum or about the teacher trying to calm him down?

3. La prof essaie de le retenir, ça lui arrive souvent à lui depuis qu’sa mère est partie leaves absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever, it makes the reading more fluid, because if ça arrive had referred to the teacher calming Kevin down, then it would have been written ça lui arrive souvent à elle since after à the pronom tonique is required. It is clearer and also it helps emphasizing the person of Kevin, it happens to him and no one else.
   Note that à lui here can only work as a redundancy, and so it would not be there if we had sentence n°1: La prof essaie de le retenir, ça arrive souvent à lui depuis qu’sa mère est partie. If we want to mention the indirect object only after the verb we have to be explicit and not use a pronoun: ... ça arrive souvent à Kevin, depuis qu’sa mère est partie. But in order to emphasize the person of Kevin he needs to be mentioned twice, before and after the verb, either by his name or by a pronoun.

4. So what about if the teacher had been male? Then the author would used the boy's name: Le prof essaie de le retenir, ça lui arrive souvent à Kevin depuis qu’sa mère est partie

Answer 2

The paragraph you mentioned is written to convey the thoughts of someone in a very, very familiar way. So this is far from written French.

With this said, the repetition of lui is just the way some people think and speak. They would repeat words within a sentence that is not correctly constructed in the first place.

What I am trying to say is that this is not intentional and does not carry anything beyond the fact that the narrator forgot in the second part of the sentence what they were thinking in the first one.

EDIT: that made me recall how my son was tackling a similar issue as a small kid. He would write things like ... et il allait vers la maison, et il (je parle de Marc) lui a dit (à Jean) que ... :)