Inversion in Modern English

Form and function

Heidrun Dorgeloh | University of Düsseldorf

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027226167 (Eur) | EUR 105.00

ISBN 9781556193729 (USA) | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027275820 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

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.

[Studies in Discourse and Grammar, 6] 1997. x, 236 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 19 December 2011

https://doi.org/10.1075/sidag.6

Table of Contents

Abbreviations | p. vii

1. Introduction | p. 1

2. Word order in English: Some theoretical preliminaries | p. 7

3. Inversion in English: The state of the art | p. 19

4. The semantics of inversion | p. 63

5. Inversion in discourse | p. 125

6. Summary and conclusion | p. 193

Appendix | p. 201

Notes | p. 204

Index | p. 225

“[...] 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 (26)

Cited by 26 other publications

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2019. EMPHATIC INVERSION AS A MEANS OF LOGICAL EMPHASIS AND COHESION IN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DISCOURSE. Philology. Theory & Practice 12:4 ► pp. 24 ff.

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2019. Chinese rhetoric. Languages in Contrast 19:1 ► pp. 133 ff.

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2017. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEGATIVE-INITIAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH. ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 33:2 ► pp. 307 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.

Duffley, Patrick

2016. The role of DO-auxiliary in subject-auxiliary inversion: Developing Langacker’s notion of existential negotiation. Cognitive Linguistics 27:2 ► pp. 269 ff.

Iwasaki, Shoichi

2015. A multiple-grammar model of speakers’ linguistic knowledge. Cognitive Linguistics 26:2 ► pp. 161 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.

Gournay, Lucie

2014. Les auxiliaires modaux et l’inversion du sujet nominal en français et en anglais. Linx :70-71 ► pp. 165 ff.

DE MATTIA-VIVIÈS, Monique & Bernard DE GIORGI

2013. Entre stabilité et instabilité : l’ordre des mots dans l’espace de la phrase. E-rea :11.1

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.

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2016. A Constructional Analysis of Obligatory XVS Syntactic Structures. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 51:1 ► pp. 51 ff.

Prado-Alonso, Carlos

2019. Obligatory inversion in scientific texts. Studia Neophilologica 91:3 ► pp. 314 ff.

Prado-Alonso, Carlos

2019. A comprehensive corpus-based analysis of “X Auxiliary Subject” constructions in written and spoken English. Topics in Linguistics 20:2 ► pp. 17 ff.

Copy, Christine & Lucie Gournay

2009. Locative Inversion In Discourse: a strategy of non-commitment. Discours :5

Jacobsson, Bengt

2007. A New Look at Negative and Correlative Subject–Auxiliary Inversion in English. Studia Neophilologica 79:1 ► pp. 35 ff.

Animasaun, Kayode, M. Lionel Bender, Patrick J. Duffley, Alan S. Kaye, Alan S. Kaye, Alan S. Kaye, Victor H. Mair, Victor H. Mair, Kanavillil Rajagopalan, Kanavillil Rajagopalan, Kanavillil Rajagopalan, Ariane Reimann-Slater, Solomon I. Sara, Jacob J. Spa, Thomas Stolz, Thomas Stolz, Yuri Tambovtsev, Graham Thurgood, Edward J. Vajda, Edward J. Vajda & Edward J. Vajda

2005. Reviews. <i>WORD</i> 56:1 ► pp. 71 ff.

Dorgeloh, Heidrun

2004. Conjunction in sentence and discourse: sentence-initial and and discourse structure. Journal of Pragmatics 36:10 ► pp. 1761 ff.

[no author supplied]

2021. Cognitive Aphasiology – A Usage-Based Approach to Language in Aphasia [Constructional Approaches to Language, 31],

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