I just started using `--with-native-compilation` and I was getting this error (see title).
First, native compilation comes in [two modes](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Native_002dCompilation-Functions.html): synchronous and asynchronous. I was getting the error when the file was being compiled asynchronously.
It turns out that I'm using [leaf](https://github.com/emacs-straight/leaf) where `leaf` is a macro. Asynchronous starts fresh and so it doesn't know that `leaf` is a macro and gets confused. So the remedy is to `(eval-when-compile (require 'leaf))` at the top of the file.
TL; DR -- the error above (with a file path and nothing after the `proper-list-p` is most likely an undefined macro hit during asynchronous compilation.