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Glossary: postposing

A strategy for information structuring involving moving an element (typically a long noun phrase) to a later point in a clause than its expected position. For example, a short Direct Object normally comes immediately after the verb, as in I wrote the date in my diary, but a long Direct Object is sometimes moved to a later position, as in I wrote in my diary all the dates I needed to remember.

Preposing and postposing

As writers and speakers there are many ways in which we can present information to readers or hearers by using different word orders and sentence patterns to highlight different aspects of meaning. This is often referred to as information structuring.

There are many ways we can highlight information. Here we will look at two important ones:

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies