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  1. It is even possible I somehow sensed those qualities which I have since discovered to be so significantly a part of her.

Does the sentence above have an extraposed subject? If so, which of the following clauses would be the extraposed subject?

  • I have since possibly discovered those qualities to be significantly a part of her.
  • I somehow sensed those qualities which I have since possibly discovered to be significantly a part of her.
  1. It is quite possible that we had a perfectly civil exchange before I began my retreat back to my own table.

Does example (2) above have an extraposed subject. If so, is the subject as follows:

  • That we had a perfect exchange before I began my retreat back to my own table is quite possible.
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  • 1
    Is what an extraposed subject, exactly? I don’t understand the format of your question… what are you actually asking? There are definitely extraposed subjects in your sentences, yes. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 27 '16 at 11:09
  • sentence #1: I can say: it seems even possible I somehow sensed those qualities which I have since discovered to be significantly a part of her. which makes me think that ''even possible'' is extraposed at the beginning as a focus. But I can also add ''even possible'' in the middle of the sentence, which gave me the feeling that ''even possible'' could be in fact a cleavage in the sentence. PS: if it was an extraposed of the subject, I could not add ''even possible'' in the middle of the sentence but only at the end of the sentence. – Mona Nov 27 '16 at 11:20
  • I still don’t see what you’re trying to say. You can’t really add even possible “in the middle of the sentence” (where exactly?). I mean, you could say “those even possible qualities”, but that would be bizarre. In your first bullet points, you replace the adjectival phrase (even) possible with the adverbial possibly, which is just changing the structure completely, and quite orthogonal to extraposition. At any rate, even possible is not extraposed as focus, because that’s not what extraposition does or how it works. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 27 '16 at 12:23
  • I will try again to explain my point of view: it, is a non-referential pronoun, it is just here to introduce a new information. In those extraposed-sentences, the informations which are known are in general place at the end of the sentence and the focus at the beginning of the sentence, introduce by the pronoun it. – Mona Nov 27 '16 at 12:34
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    No, you can’t. You cannot “sense [something] possible” because sense is not a linking verb. It can take an infinitival complement, though, which can be a linking verb; so you can say, “I sensed those qualities […] to be possible”. That is still a completely different sentence, though. In the original, what is possible is not the qualities, but the fact that the qualities were sensed by you: “That I somehow sensed those qualities […] is even possible”. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Nov 27 '16 at 12:54

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