Meanings
plural extrapositions
- countableuncountablehuman sciencesThe movement of an element from its normal place to one at the end, or near the end, of a sentence.
1 more example
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.
2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Dependency Locality in Language Processing” (chapter 4), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 110
Origin
- Proto-Indo-European*h₁éǵʰs
- Proto-Indo-European*h₁eǵʰsteros
- Proto-Italic*eksteros
- Latinexter
- Latinextrā
- Englishextra-
- Englishposition
- Englishextraposition
Cite this entry
extraposition. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/extraposition
“extraposition.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/extraposition. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “extraposition,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/extraposition.
Source: extraposition on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.