As classic examples of formal syntactic analysis,it-extraposition and non-extraposition have received considerable attention in the transformational literature. This book offers a different perspective. While including a detailed formal analysis which provides extensive quantitative data, its main concern is that of a functional description of the extraposition paradigm. Based on a large-scale corpus of naturally-occurring instances of it-extraposition and non-extraposition, Kaltenböck’s study provides an in-depth analysis of their respective communicative functions in spoken and written texts. In doing so it takes a close look at the question of choice within this syntactic paradigm: Why does a speaker or writer choose one constructional variant rather than the other? What are the factors that influence this choice? Taking into account the use and distribution of (non-)extraposition in a wide range of different text types, the study identifies a number of specific communicative properties for each variant, amply illustrated with examples from the corpus.