Extraposed

Extraposed is a term used in linguistics to describe a sentence in which a constituent that would normally appear early in a clause is moved to the right, or to the end, of the clause. The extraposed element is typically a clause (finite or nonfinite) or a noun phrase, and the remaining material of the clause carries a dummy subject such as it or there to satisfy the syntactic slot usually occupied by the extraposed element.

A common pattern in English is extraposition of a clause with a dummy subject. For example, in It is likely that she will arrive, the content clause that she will arrive is moved to the end of the sentence, and the word it serves as a preparatory subject. The corresponding non-extraposed form is That she will arrive is likely, which is generally judged less natural in everyday speech. Nonfinite extraposition also occurs, as in To finish the project on time would require more resources, where the infinitival clause To finish the project on time sits at the end.

Extraposition can serve several discourse purposes, including emphasizing the extraposed material, influencing information structure, or easing processing by placing heavy or new content after the main clause. It interacts with information structure, focus, and perspective-taking, and is analyzed in different ways across languages. While most familiar in English, extraposition appears in various forms in other languages, often with language-specific constraints on which elements can be extraposed and how dummy subjects or other devices are used.

In summary, extraposed constructions relocate a constituent to the clause’s tail while preserving a grammatical subject and the overall propositional content, a feature common in descriptive grammars of English and explored in cross-linguistic syntax.