Full-verb Inversion Research Articles

The semantics of the simple tenses and full-verb inversion in English

AbstractThis paper offers a fresh perspective on (restrictions on) aspectual coercion, thereby focusing on the essentially epistemic import of aspectual constructions. The case study that I will discuss is the unexpected use of the simple tenses for ongoing event reports in sentences involving full-verb inversion. I will argue that this attestation of the simple present/past in inverted sentences can be analyzed as a kind of aspectual mismatch between the higher-order construction and the embedded tenses. Yet at a more basic, epistemic level of analysis, there is no mismatch: the full-verb inversion construction and the embedded tenses are similar in the sense that both report events that are conceived of as fully and instantly identifiable.

The Cognitive Structure of Full-Verb Inversion and Existential Structures in English

The goal of this study is to build on the Cognitive Grammar analysis of full-verb inversion (FVI) and existential structures proposed by Chen (2003, 2011 and 2013). Close attention will be given to two characteristics of these constructions not discussed by this author – lack of subject-verb agreement and the type of pronominal forms that occur in them – and their consequences forFVI’s cognitive structure will be worked out. Further parallels betweenFVIand the existentialthere-construction will be brought to light concerning the type of verbal predicate allowed, negation, transitivity, agreement patterns, presentational function, pronominal forms and heaviness of postverbalNPs. The cognitive structure ofFVIwith lack of S-V concord is argued to be: (1) ground-setter, (2) verb heralding presence/appearance of a generic third-person figure in the ground, (3) nominal identifying the generic figure. Chen’s Invertability Hypothesis is shown to generate false predictions with fronted adjectives and adverbials, and the claim that the preverbal element is in focus is shown to be problematic in the light of its usual status as given information.FVIis argued to be a construction in Goldberg’s (2006) sense of the term, although it does not constitute a meaning-form pairing which is completely independent of the lexical items that instantiate it.

The role of DO-auxiliary in subject-auxiliary inversion: Developing Langacker’s notion of existential negotiation

AbstractThis paper builds on Langacker’s (in press. How to build an English clause.Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics2(2)) analysis of subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI) as involving “existential negotiation”. Langacker’s account is completed by relating it to full verb inversion (FVI). In FVI, non-core elements are fronted, resulting in inversion without an auxiliary, as inInto the room walked Mary; however, non-core elements are also frontable in SAI, as inBitterly did we regret our decision.Dois treated as denoting full actualization and SAI is accounted for by focus on an exceptionally intense mode of actualization, whence the use ofdoto explicitly express what is focused on. The role ofinto the roomin the FVI example is to define a locus into which an entity is introduced. Since this does not involve focus on the fact or manner of the verbal event’s actualization,dois not used. This leads to a different division of inverted structures than that of Chen (2013. Subject auxiliary inversion and linguistic generalization: Evidence for functional/cognitive motivation in language.Cognitive Linguistics24. 1–32), who distinguishes those that merely reverse subject and auxiliary (argued to denote non-indicative mood) from those where the inverted auxiliary-subject order is accompanied by fronting of a non-subject element (treated as involving focus on the fronted item). It is argued here that frontingdo-auxiliary marks focus on the actualization of the verbal event itself.

The relation between aspect and inversion in English

This article discusses the peculiar use of the simple present/past in full-verb inversion (i.e. locative inversion, directional inversion, quotative inversion, presentational there), and the corresponding scarcity of progressive aspect in these contexts. While it is normally ungrammatical in English to use the simplex tenses to report events that are ongoing at reference time, inversion seems to defy this restriction. Building on a combination of insights from analyses of aspect and of full-verb inversion in English, this study presents a cognitive-functional explanation for this exceptional characteristic of inversion that has gone largely unnoticed in previous accounts. I argue that there exists a canonical relationship between the preposed ground and the postposed figure in full-verb inversion and that this meaning of canonicity ties in perfectly with the perfective value that I deem constitutive of the English simple tenses. In addition, some cases of directional inversion involve a ‘deictic effect’ (Drubig 1988): in these instances, the conceptualizer's vantage point is anchored within the ground and the denoted (dis)appearance of the figure is construed as inevitable. On the basis of a large sample of corpus data and native-speaker elicitations, I demonstrate that the use of the progressive is disallowed in inverted contexts that involve a deictic effect, while its use is dispreferred but not excluded in other cases of inversion. This study thus brings together insights from the domains of information structure and aspect in English, and merges these into a comprehensive cognitive account.

Subject auxiliary inversion and linguistic generalization: Evidence for functional/cognitive motivation in language

AbstractThis paper provides a unified account of English subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI). It argues that SAIs, as have been called in the literature, belong to two semantically distinctive constructions. The first is the Auxiliary Subject Construction (ASC), one that merely reverses the subject and auxiliary order, without the fronting of another unit. It functions to mark non-indicative moods. The second SAI construction is the X Auxiliary Subject Construction (XASC), in which the auxiliary-subject (AS) order is accompanied by the fronting of a unit from its original, post-subject position in the canonical, SV order sentence. The XASC serves a different purpose from the ASC, i.e., to focus the fronted unit. As such, it shares both structural and functional affinity with full-verb inversion (Chen 2003), which is referred to hereafter as the X Verb Subject Construction (XVSC) for sake of consistency. The second purpose of this study is to address the issue of invertability of the subject auxiliary/verb order. Drawing on Deane (1992), I propose an Invertability Hypothesis, which applies to both the XASC and the XVSC. On this hypothesis, invertability depends on the strength of the linkage between the fronted unit and the auxiliary/verb that exists in the canonical sentence. The stronger the link, the more likely the order of the subject and the auxiliary/verb will be inversed once the unit is fronted. With this analysis – one that is decidedly different from previous accounts (e.g. Goldberg 2006) – I intend to demonstrate that the functional/cognitive approach to language is indeed capable of handling a complex construction such as inversion, the generalization of which generative linguists believe can only be stated formally (Newmeyer 1998; Borsley and Newmeyer 2009; Lidz and Williams 2009).

Text Structuring in Written English: The Role of Inversion

Full-verb inversion constructions in which the subject follows the entire verb phrase in a declarative clause—as in “At the top of each Ministry was a British adviser” or “Here, in otherwise total darkness, shone a single square of light”—have been the subject of extensive research in recent years, the focus of different studies varying according to the nature and goals of the specific theoretical framework adopted. On the basis of the kind of phrasal category occurring as clause-initial constituent, five different types of full inversion have traditionally been distinguished in the literature: noun phrase, adverb phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, and prepositional phrase full inversion. Broadly speaking, analyses of full-verb inversion carried out within the generative and functional paradigms have focused mainly on inversions following a locative constituent, which subsumes spatial locations, path, and directions, and their extension to some temporal and abstract locative domains. In this sense, they neglect the analysis of those full inversion types, namely noun phrase and adjective phrase full inversion, which do not normally contain such clause-initial constituents. In order to bridge this gap, the present paper offers a corpus-based analysis of noun phrase inversion in present-day written English texts. It is argued that the distribution of the construction is related to the degree of abstractness of its texts, and that noun phrase inversion can be considered a syntactic device that codes abstract relations.

A comprehensive account of full-verb inversion in English

Despite the abundant corpus-based research on full-inversion constructions in which the subject follows the entire verb phrase in a declarative clause, the analysis of this construction in the spoken mode has traditionally been neglected since it has been suggested that natural speech is not a good source of inversions. The article shows that speech, too, can be a good source of data for full inversion and that the spoken and the written modes do not differ in the overall distribution of the construction but rather in the types of inversion used and in the pragmatic functions these inversions serve in discourse. The article also casts light on the lack of consensus regarding the distribution of full inversion in written fictional and non-fictional texts, and in the pragmatic function the construction serves in both genres.