The early versions of generative grammar usually assume that phrases occupying the postverbal field are base-generated in the middle field of the clause, in line with Koster’s hypothesis that the underlying structure of Dutch is OV in nature, and are subsequently moved to a postverbal position by a rule known as extraposition in the case of clauses and PP-over-V in the case of PPs; we simply refer to this rule as extraposition. One problem with this proposal is that it is not consistent with Emonds’ (1976) structure preservation principle, which requires movement to target an independently motivated position.

Extraposition also ran into an important empirical problem related to the freezing principle, which prohibits wh-extraction from a moved phrase; cf. Koster (1978: §2.6.4.4), Corver (2006b/2017) and Ruys (2008). At first glance, extraposition of PPs seems to provide strong evidence for a rightward movement analysis, since PPs only allow wh-extraction when they are in preverbal position; if the postverbal PP in (145a) is in a derived position, the freezing principle correctly predicts that wh-extraction from this position is impossible; cf. (145b).

However, the freezing principle also predicts that wh-extraction from an extraposed clause is impossible, but this is clearly wrong, since it is possible in so-called bridge-verb contexts; cf. De Haan (1979).

The contrast between the extraction possibilities from extraposed PPs and clauses has led to the claim that extraposition is not a uniform phenomenon. For example, Barbiers (1995a/2000) provides two completely different but compatible analyses for the examples in (145) and (146). That extraposition is not a unitary phenomenon becomes even clearer when we include split extraposition, which has long resisted a satisfactory syntactic account, perhaps until today. Since Kaan (1992), analyses have been developed that abandon the idea that split extraposition is derived from a structure in which the split parts form an underlying constituent. Koster (2000) and De Vries (1999/2002/2011) have claimed that split extraposition is actually a form of juxtaposition (with or without deletion). See Section 9.4 for more historical background; cf. also Corver (1991), Kaan (1992), Koster (2000), Baltin (2006/2017), De Vries (2002), Zwart (2011: §9.3.2), and the references cited therein.

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