Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus LinguisticsVol. 10:2 (2005) ► pp.119–159
It-extraposition in English
A functional view
This paper investigates the communicative use ofit-extraposition (e.g.It is surprising that John went to London) in texts, based on a corpus analysis of 1,701 instances in the British component of theInternational Corpus of English. Contrary to the wayit-extraposition is often treated in the literature, it does not represent a uniform functional category whose communicative purpose arises mainly from its status as the stylistically unmarked counterpart of non-extraposition. An analysis of the information status of the extraposed subject shows that it is possible to distinguish two basic types (Given Complement Extraposition and New Complement Extraposition) which differ fundamentally in their communicative potential and distribution in different (spoken and written) text types. For each of the two informational types a number of specific uses in texts are identified taking into account thematic structure (topic-comment) and the semantic nature of the matrix predicate.
Cited by
Cited by 32 other publications
Biber, Douglas, Mark Davies, James K. Jones & Nicole Tracy-Ventura
2006. Spoken and written register variation in Spanish: A multi-dimensional analysis. Corpora 1:1 ► pp. 1 ff. 
Bourgoin, Charlotte
2022. Towards a new typology of the referential information structure of specificational it-clefts. Text & Talk 0:0
BOURGOIN, CHARLOTTE, GERARD O'GRADY & KRISTIN DAVIDSE
2021. Managing information flow through prosody init-clefts. English Language and Linguistics 25:3 ► pp. 485 ff.
Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy
2017. Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?. Applied Linguistics 38:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Davidse, Kristin
2022. Refining and re-defining secondary determiners in relation to primary determiners. In English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective [Studies in Language Companion Series, 221], ► pp. 28 ff.
Deroey, K. L. B.
2015. Marking Importance in Lectures: Interactive and Textual Orientation. Applied Linguistics 36:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Ebrahimi, Seyed Foad & Reza Moghaddam
2019. SUBJECT IT-EXTRAPOSITION IN APPLIED LINGUISTICS RESEARCH ARTICLES: SEMANTIC AND SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS. Discourse and Interaction 12:1 ► pp. 29 ff.
EunJooLee
2008. An analysis of corpus-based research on TEFL and applied linguistics.. English Teaching 63:2 ► pp. 283 ff.
Gentens, Caroline
2016. The discursive status of extraposed object clauses. Journal of Pragmatics 96 ► pp. 15 ff.
Gentens, Caroline, Lobke Ghesquière, William B. McGregor & An Van linden
2023. Introduction. Reconnecting form and meaning. In Reconnecting Form and Meaning [Studies in Language Companion Series, 230], ► pp. 1 ff.
Hasselgård, Hilde
2023. Chapter 2. Impersonal passives in English and Norwegian. In Reconnecting Form and Meaning [Studies in Language Companion Series, 230], ► pp. 45 ff.
Hilpert, Martin
2014. Collostructional analysis. In Corpus Methods for Semantics [Human Cognitive Processing, 43], ► pp. 391 ff.
Kaltenböck, Gunther
2014. Processibility. In Corpus Pragmatics, ► pp. 117 ff.
Kaltenböck, Gunther
Kaltenböck, Gunther
2023. Chapter 1. On the use of there -clefts with zero subject relativizer. In Reconnecting Form and Meaning [Studies in Language Companion Series, 230], ► pp. 17 ff.
Laporte, Samantha, Tove Larsson & Larissa Goulart
2021. Testing the Principle of No Synonymy across levels of abstraction. Constructions and Frames 13:2 ► pp. 230 ff.
Larsson, Tove
2016. The introductory it pattern: Variability explored in learner and expert writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 22 ► pp. 64 ff.
Larsson, Tove
2017. A functional classification of the introductory it pattern: Investigating academic writing by non-native-speaker and native-speaker students. English for Specific Purposes 48 ► pp. 57 ff.
Larsson, Tove
2018. Is there a correlation between form and function? A syntactic and functional investigation of the introductory it pattern in student writing. ICAME Journal 42:1 ► pp. 13 ff.
Larsson, Tove & Henrik Kaatari
2022. Extraposition in learner and expert writing. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research ► pp. 33 ff.
Miller, Jim & Andreea S. Calude
2020. Speaking and Writing English. In The Handbook of English Linguistics, ► pp. 547 ff.
Namgeun Lee
2015. A Data Driven Learning Approch to English Extraposition Constructions. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal 23:3 ► pp. 69 ff.
Pham, Teresa
2017. “Hard to Beat Dickens’ Characters”: Non-Canonical Syntax in Evaluative Texts. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 65:3 ► pp. 247 ff.
Van Praet, Wout
2021. Re-evaluating the importance of discourse-embedding for specificational and predicative clauses. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 31:4 ► pp. 560 ff.
van Praet, Wout
2023. Referential accessibility as an index of the discourse functions of predicative and specificational clauses. Text & Talk 43:1 ► pp. 113 ff.
Van Praet, Wout & Gerard O'Grady
2018. The prosody of specification: Discourse intonational cues to setting up a variable. Journal of Pragmatics 135 ► pp. 87 ff.
Wang, Jiaojiao & Jiangping Zhou
2022. A Corpus-Based Study of Semantic Categorizations of Attracted Adjectives to the it BE ADJ clause Construction. SAGE Open 12:2 ► pp. 215824402210912 ff.
Wang, Zhong, Weiwei Fan & Alex Chengyu Fang
2022. Lexical Input in the Grammatical Expression of Stance: A Collexeme Analysis of the INTRODUCTORY IT PATTERN. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Wiliński, Jarosław
2018. Adjectives in extraposed constructions with that-clauses: a quantitative corpus-driven analysis. Brno studies in English :1 ► pp. [83] ff.
Zhou, Jiangping
2021. A corpus-based study of explicit objective modal expressions in English. Studia Neophilologica ► pp. 1 ff.
Zhou, Jiangping
2022. A corpus-based study of congruent and metaphorical patterns of modality in English. Studia Neophilologica ► pp. 1 ff.
Ädel, Annelie
2014. Selecting quantitative data for qualitative analysis: A case study connecting a lexicogrammatical pattern to rhetorical moves. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 16 ► pp. 68 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.