Talk:Extraposition

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Other languages[edit]

This page would benefit from some examples outside English (preferably outside IE).

Great. Please provide them. I can ensure that the additional examples are integrated well into the existing article. --Tjo3ya (talk) 21:36, 7 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quote: “This flexibility allows Catalan to use extraposition extensively, much more than French or Spanish. Thus, Catalan can have m'hi recomanaren ("they recommended me to him"), whereas in French one must say ils m'ont recommandé à lui, and Spanish me recomendaron a él. This allows the placement of almost any nominal term as a sentence topic, without having to use so often the passive voice (as in French or English), or identifying the direct object with a preposition (as in Spanish).”

It seems that extraposition is NOT "a mechanism of syntax that alters word order in such a manner that a relatively "heavy" constituent appears to the right of its canonical position" in languages other than English. Could someone (@Tjo3ya) integrate this into the article? –2dk (talk) 09:27, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Qualification or support?[edit]

Extraposition likely fails in this case because with red hair cannot be construed as important information.

This seems oddly speculative. How can we verify this?

Shouldn't it at least be "according to <theory or author>, this fails because..."

Spike0xff (talk) 02:47, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I remember reading somewhere that extraposed material should be informationally heavy, and that therefore it cannot occur if the extraposed material is informationally less heavy than some other part of the sentence. Unfortunately, I do not remember where I read that. I think it is basically accurate though. Note the use of "likely" in the preceding sentence. But what makes you think it is inaccurate? Do you have some other explanation for why extraposition fails in the example? Can you cite a source backing up your explanation? If we disagree about the point, we can simply remove the two example sentences.--Tjo3ya (talk) 04:34, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]