1108: Extraposition Dec 21, 2017

Adjunct—phrases that modifies or qualifies something in a sentence but is not grammatically necessary—are fairly common in especially given that there is not necessarily a limit on how many can be used. This does not mean, however, that these will be treated the same way syntactically. In the sentence, "Bill is a student of linguistics", "of linguistics" is an adjunct, and so is "with glasses" in "Bill is a student with glasses". However, while one could say "what (field) of linguistics is Bill a student of", one could not really say "what (colour) glasses is Bill a student with". This is because some adjuncts can be extraposed, which is to say that they can be moved to the front of the sentence, often leaving a preposition behind, while others cannot. Extraposition is also why people can start a sentence with an impersonal 'it', such as 'it is no use crying over spilt milk" as opposed to "crying over spilt milk is no use", where 'it' does not appear in the latter example because there the subject is in the first position, as is standard.

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