Inversion in Modern English
Form and function
| University of Düsseldorf
The book offers a comprehensive study of the different forms of subject-verb and subject-auxiliary-inversion in Modern English declarative sentences. It treats inversion as a speaker-based decision for reordering within a fairly rigid word order system and identifies the meaning of the construction in terms of point of view and speaker subjectivity. This semantic claim is tested against the occurrence, as well as the absence, of the different forms of inversion in natural discourse.
The analysis of the pragmatics and discourse function of inversion is based on the LOB and the Brown corpus and takes into account various textual relations: British and American English, written mode, style, text type, genre. The results suggest a strong affinity with the greater or lesser subjectivity of a text: the construction is a marker of interpersonal meaning. Provided the context is one of relative unexpectedness, it additionally becomes a discourse marker, which points to the limited value of quantitative corpus data in functional syntax.
The analysis of the pragmatics and discourse function of inversion is based on the LOB and the Brown corpus and takes into account various textual relations: British and American English, written mode, style, text type, genre. The results suggest a strong affinity with the greater or lesser subjectivity of a text: the construction is a marker of interpersonal meaning. Provided the context is one of relative unexpectedness, it additionally becomes a discourse marker, which points to the limited value of quantitative corpus data in functional syntax.
[Studies in Discourse and Grammar, 6] 1997. x, 236 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Abbreviations
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vii
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1. Introduction
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1
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2. Word order in English: Some theoretical preliminaries
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7
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3. Inversion in English: The state of the art
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19
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4. The semantics of inversion
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63
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5. Inversion in discourse
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125
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6. Summary and conclusion
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193
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Appendix
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201
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Notes
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204
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References
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214
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Index
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225
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“[...] this book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on functional aspects of inversion in Modern English.”
Peter Erdmann, Technical University of Berlin
Cited by
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2005. Reviews.
<i>WORD</i> 56:1 ► pp. 71 ff. 
DE WIT, ASTRID
2016. The relation between aspect and inversion in English.
English Language and Linguistics 20:1 ► pp. 107 ff.
De Wit, Astrid
2018. The semantics of the simple tenses and full-verb inversion in English.
Constructions and Frames 10:2 ► pp. 210 ff.
Dorgeloh, Heidrun
2004. Conjunction in sentence and discourse: sentence-initial and and discourse structure.
Journal of Pragmatics 36:10 ► pp. 1761 ff.
Iwasaki, Shoichi
2015. A multiple-grammar model of speakers’ linguistic knowledge.
Cognitive Linguistics 26:2 ► pp. 161 ff.
Jacobsson, Bengt
2007. A New Look at Negative and Correlative Subject–Auxiliary Inversion in English.
Studia Neophilologica 79:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Lu, Wei-lun
2020. Narrative viewpoint and subjective construal across languages.
Cognitive Linguistic Studies 7:2 ► pp. 334 ff.
Marcus, Imogen
2018.
In The Linguistics of Spoken Communication in Early Modern English Writing,
► pp. 135 ff.
Prado-Alonso, Carlos
2011. Text Structuring in Written English: The Role of Inversion.
English Studies 92:4 ► pp. 449 ff.
Prado-Alonso, Carlos
2014. Verb Phrase Inversion in Fictional and Non-Fictional Written English.
English Studies 95:2 ► pp. 177 ff.
Prado-Alonso, Carlos
2019. Obligatory inversion in scientific texts.
Studia Neophilologica 91:3 ► pp. 314 ff.
SHIZAWA, TAKASHI
2015. THE RHETORICAL EFFECT OF LOCATIVE INVERSION CONSTRUCTIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE THREE-TIER MODEL OF LANGUAGE USE.
ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 32:1 ► pp. 156 ff.
Vlasko, Natal’ya Konstantinovna, Galina Grigor’evna Gurova & Tamara Il’inichna Kuznetsova
2019. EMPHATIC INVERSION AS A MEANS OF LOGICAL EMPHASIS AND COHESION IN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DISCOURSE.
Philological Sciences. Issues of Theory and Practice :4 ► pp. 24 ff.
Yeung, Lorrita
2019. Chinese rhetoric.
Languages in Contrast 19:1 ► pp. 133 ff.
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Subjects
BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General