Extraposition of defocused and light PPs 
in English

This paper discusses three types of PP extraposition, namely, extraposition in focus-neutral contexts and extraposition of defocused and prosodically deficient PPs. The focus of the paper lies on prosodic properties of defocused and clitical PPs. I argue and discuss evidence that extraposition is phonologically conditioned and occurs at PF. Particularly, extraposition in neutral contexts is a consequence of the interaction of phonological interface constraints that are independently needed for prosodic phrasing. The account of extraposition of defocused PPs exploits the relation between accentuation and focus structure, with the result that defocused constituents are moved into the postnuclear stretch, where they can be completely deaccented. Finally, a constraint requiring exhaustive parsing of postlexical material forces prosodically deficient PPs to either cliticise onto an adjacent prosodic word or move away from it.

Published online: 16 July 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.200.15gob