extraposition

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noun

The movement of an element from its normal place to one at the end, or near the end, of a sentence.

Scrabble 22

Meanings

nounextraposition (countable and uncountable, plural extrapositions)

plural extrapositions

  1. 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

  1. Proto-Indo-European*h₁éǵʰs
  2. Proto-Indo-European*h₁eǵʰsteros
  3. Proto-Italic*eksteros
  4. Latinexter
  5. Latinextrā
  6. Englishextra-
  7. Englishposition
  8. Englishextraposition

From extra- + position.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

extraposition. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/extraposition

MLA

“extraposition.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/extraposition. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “extraposition,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/extraposition.

Source: extraposition on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.