To be or not to be extraposed: an extraposition profile of Paarl-Kaaps

Abstract

This article examines extraposition in Paarl-Kaaps against the backdrop of research showing it to be a multifactorial, gradient phenomenon shaped by syntactic, prosodic, and processing factors. Using spontaneous speech data from the SEcoKa corpus, we conducted a series of binary univariate logistic regressions, followed by a multivariate analysis, to identify significant predictors of extraposition, and their interactions. The strongest overall predictor is grammatical category: extraposition occurs most frequently with relative clauses (RCs), followed by adpositional phrases (PPs), direct objects, and short adverbs. Further analysis reveals that PP-extraposition is robustly conditioned by constituent weight and argument status, while relative clause- extraposition shows an unexpected, inverted weight pattern, suggesting that structural constraints tied to head type or attachment site obscure weight effects. Despite category-based contrasts, light constituents (including adverbs) display non-negligible extraposition rates, suggesting that lightness is not, in itself, a strong inhibitor of extraposition.