extraposition

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰ

Proto-Indo-European *-s

Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs

Proto-Indo-European *-teros

Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰsteros

Proto-Italic *eksteros

Latin exter

Latin extrā

English extra-

English position

English extraposition

From extra- + position.

Noun

extraposition (countable and uncountable, plural extrapositions)

1. (linguistics) The movement of an element from its normal place to one at the end, or near the end, of a sentence.
   • 2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Dependency Locality in Language Processing” (chapter 4), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 110:

     The relative clause who impressed the audience is adjacent to its head noun performer in (106a). The same relative clause crosses the root dependency coming into the main verb came in (106b): a crossed dependency. This structure was read more slowly in Levy et al.’s (2012) experiments, plausibly because of the crossed dependency: the extraposition.