Chapter 5 of Discourse Syntax (Special Endings) deals with two constructions that place sentence elements in the final, end-focus position. Discussing the extraposition of subject clauses (it-extraposition) and the cleft construction (it-clefting), the chapter shows that both constructions serve the distribution of given before new information in the sentence and the placement of complex material at the end of the sentence (Principle of End-Weight). It also shows that alternative constructions (non-extraposition) as well as discourse types and registers play a role in how these non-canonical constructions are used and that there are differences between speech and writing as well as other discourse types and modes. The chapter also discusses the presentation and visualization of quantitative corpus-linguistic evidence and presents strategies for dealing with absolute, normalized, and proportional frequencies gained from natural language corpora.

Chapter 5 reports on the uses of general extenders in terms of their textual function in the verbal record of interaction and their role in turn construction. An analysis is presented of some examples as performance fillers, placeholders or filled pauses used in the articulation of utterances, as well as their potential role for some speakers as oral punctuation marks, or punctors, all features that some would view negatively. Their role in the internal structure of utterances is described in terms of brackets and clusters, specifically as right brackets, and as elements in clusters with other pragmatic markers. Different forms are shown to have a role in information structure, including foregrounding, as well as in turn management. Distinct structural patterns can be observed in some cases when forms are used to indicate turn-completion and to mark topic shift, all described and exemplified.