Inversion

(linguistics)

In linguistics, inversion is any of several grammatical constructions where two expressions

switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert. There are several types of
subject-verb inversion in English: locative inversion, directive inversion, copular inversion, and
quotative inversion. The most frequent type of inversion in English is subject–auxiliary
inversion in which an auxiliary verb changes places with its subject; it often occurs in
questions, such as Are you coming?, with the subject you is switched with the auxiliary are. In
many other languages, especially those with a freer word order than English, inversion can
take place with a variety of verbs (not just auxiliaries) and with other syntactic categories as
well.

When a layered constituency-based analysis of sentence structure is used, inversion often

results in the discontinuity of a constituent, but that would not be the case with a flatter
dependency-based analysis. In that regard, inversion has consequences similar to those of
shifting.

In English …

In broad terms, one can distinguish between two major types of inversion in English that
involve verbs: subject–auxiliary inversion and subject–verb inversion.[1] The difference
between these two types resides with the nature of the verb involved: whether it is an
auxiliary verb or a full verb.

Subject–auxiliary inversion
…
The most frequently occurring type of inversion in English is subject–auxiliary inversion. The
subject and auxiliary verb invert (switch positions):

a. Fred will stay.

b. Will Fred stay? - Subject–auxiliary inversion with yes/no question
a. Larry has done it.
b. What has Larry done? - Subject–auxiliary inversion with constituent question
a. Fred has helped at no point.
b. At no point has Fred helped. - Subject–auxiliary inversion with fronted expression
containing negation (negative inversion)
a. If we were to surrender, ...
b. Were we to surrender, ... - Subject–auxiliary inversion in condition clause – see English
subjunctive § Inversion in condition clauses

The default order in English is subject–verb (SV), but a number of meaning-related

differences (such as those illustrated above) motivate the subject and auxiliary verb to invert
so that the finite verb precedes the subject; one ends up with auxiliary–subject (Aux-S) order.
That type of inversion fails if the finite verb is not an auxiliary:

a. Fred stayed.
b. *Stayed Fred? - Inversion impossible here because the verb is NOT an auxiliary verb

(The star * is the symbol used in linguistics to indicate that the example is grammatically
unacceptable.)

Subject–verb inversion
…
In languages like Italian, Spanish, Finnish, etc. subject-verb inversion is commonly seen with a
wide range of verbs and does not require an element at the beginning of the sentence. See
the following Italian example:

è arrivato Giovanni.
is arrived Giovanni
'Giovanni arrived'

In English, on the other hand, subject-verb inversion generally takes the form of a Locative
inversion. A familiar example of subject-verb inversion from English is the presentational
there construction.

There's a shark.
English (especially written English) also has an inversion construction involving a locative
expression other than there ("in a little white house" in the following example):

In a little white house lived two rabbits.[2]

Contrary to the subject-auxiliary inversion, the verb in cases of subject–verb inversion in

English is not required to be an auxiliary verb; it is, rather, a full verb or a form of the copula
be. If the sentence has an auxiliary verb, the subject is placed after the auxiliary and the main
verb. For example:

a. A unicorn will come into the room.

b. Into the room will come a unicorn.

Since this type of inversion generally places the focus on the subject, the subject is likely to
be a full noun or noun phrase rather than a pronoun. Third-person personal pronouns are
especially unlikely to be found as the subject in this construction:

a. Down the stairs came the dog. - Noun subject

b. ? Down the stairs came it. - Third-person personal pronoun as subject; unlikely unless
it has special significance and is stressed
c. Down the stairs came I. - First-person personal pronoun as subject; more likely, though
still I would require stress

In other languages …

Certain other languages, like other Germanic languages and Romance languages, use
inversion in ways broadly similar to English, such as in question formation. The restriction of
inversion to auxiliary verbs does not generally apply in those languages; subjects can be
inverted with any type of verb, but particular languages have their own rules and restrictions.

For example, in French, tu aimes le chocolat is a declarative sentence meaning "you like the
chocolate". When the order of the subject tu ("you") and the verb aimes ("like") is switched, a
question is produced: aimes-tu le chocolat? ("do you like the chocolate?"). In German,
similarly, du magst means "you like", whereas magst du can mean "do you like?".

In languages with V2 word order, such as German, inversion can occur as a consequence of
the requirement that the verb appear as the second constituent in a declarative sentence.
Thus, if another element (such as an adverbial phrase or clause) introduces the sentence, the
verb must come next and be followed by the subject: Ein Jahr nach dem Autounfall sieht er
wirklich gut aus, literally "A year after the car accident, looks he really good". The same occurs
in some other West Germanic languages, like Dutch, in which this is Een jaar na het auto-
ongeval ziet hij er werkelijk goed uit. (In such languages, inversion can function as a test for
syntactic constituency since only one constituent may surface preverbally.)

In languages with free word order, inversion of subject and verb or of other elements of a
clause can occur more freely, often for pragmatic reasons rather than as part of a specific
grammatical construction.

Locative inversion
…
Locative inversion is a common linguistic phenomenon that has been studied by linguists of
various theoretical backgrounds.

In multiple Bantu languages, such as Chichewa,[3] the locative and subject arguments of
certain verbs can be inverted without changing the semantic roles of those arguments,
similar to the English subject-verb inversion examples above. Below are examples from
Zulu,[4] where the numbers indicate Noun classes, SBJ = subject agreement prefix, APPL =
applicative suffix, FV = final vowel in Bantu verbal morphology, and LOC is the locative
circumfix for adjuncts.

Canonical word order:

1. A-bantwana ba-fund-el-a e-sikole-ni.

2. 2-2.child 2.SBJ-study-APPL-FV LOC:7-7.school-LOC

3. "The children study at the school."

Locative inversion:
1. I-sikole si-fund-el-a a-bantwana.

2. 7-7.school 7.SBJ-study-APPL-FV 2-2.child

3. ≈ "The children study at the school." (Literally "The school studies the children.")

In the locative inversion example, isikole, "school" acts as the subject of the sentence while
semantically remaining a locative argument rather than a subject/agent one. Moreover, we
can see that it is able to trigger subject-verb agreement as well, further indicating that it is the
syntactic subject of the sentence.

This is in contrast to examples of locative inversion in English, where the semantic subject of
the sentence controls subject-verb agreement, implying that it is a dislocated syntactic
subject as well:

1. Down the hill rolls the car.

2. Down the hill roll the cars.

In the English examples, the verb roll agrees in number with cars, implying that the latter is
still the syntactic subject of the sentence, despite being in a noncanonical subject position.
However, in the Zulu example of locative inversion, it is the noun isikole, "school" that controls
subject-verb agreement, despite not being the semantic subject of the sentence.

Locative inversion is observed in Mandarin Chinese. Consider the following sentences:

Canonical word order

Gǎngshào zhàn zài ménkǒu.
Sentry stand at door
'At the entrance stands a/the sentry'

Locative inversion
Ménkǒu zhàn-zhe gǎngshào.
Door stand- sentry
'At the entrance stands a/the sentry' [5]

In canonical word order, the subject (gǎngshào 'sentry') appears before the verb and the
locative expression (ménkǒu 'door') after the verb. In Locative inversion, the two expressions
switch the order of appearance: it is the locative that appears before the verb while the
subject occurs in postverbal position. In Chinese, as in many other languages, the inverted
word order carry a presentational function, that is, it is used to introduce new entities into
discourse.[6]

Theoretical analyses …

Syntactic inversion has played an important role in the history of linguistic theory because of
the way it interacts with question formation and topic and focus constructions. The particular
analysis of inversion can vary greatly depending on the theory of syntax that one pursues.
One prominent type of analysis is in terms of movement in transformational phrase structure
grammars.[7] Since those grammars tend to assume layered structures that acknowledge a
finite verb phrase (VP) constituent, they need movement to overcome what would otherwise
be a discontinuity. In dependency grammars, by contrast, sentence structure is less layered
(in part because a finite VP constituent is absent), which means that simple cases of
inversion do not involve a discontinuity;[8] the dependent simply appears on the other side of
its head. The two competing analyses are illustrated with the following trees:
The two trees on the left illustrate the movement analysis of subject-auxiliary inversion in a
constituency-based theory; a BPS-style (bare phrase structure) representational format is
employed, where the words themselves are used as labels for the nodes in the tree. The finite
verb will is seen moving out of its base position into a derived position at the front of the
clause. The trees on the right show the contrasting dependency-based analysis. The flatter
structure, which lacks a finite VP constituent, does not require an analysis in terms of
movement but the dependent Fred simply appears on the other side of its head Will.

Pragmatic analyses of inversion generally emphasize the information status of the two
noncanonically-positioned phrases – that is, the degree to which the switched phrases
constitute given or familiar information vs. new or informative information. Birner (1996), for
example, draws on a corpus study of naturally-occurring inversions to show that the initial
preposed constituent must be at least as familiar within the discourse (in the sense of Prince
1992) as the final postposed constituent – which in turn suggests that inversion serves to
help the speaker maintain a given-before-new ordering of information within the sentence. In
later work, Birner (2018) argues that passivization and inversion are variants, or alloforms, of
a single argument-reversing construction that, in turn, serves in a given instance as either a
variant of a more general preposing construction or a more general postposing construction.

The overriding function of inverted sentences (including locative inversion) is presentational:

the construction is typically used either to introduce a discourse-new referent or to introduce
an event which in turn involves a referent which is discourse-new. The entity thus introduced
will serve as the topic of the subsequent discourse.[9] Consider the following spoken Chinese
example:

Zhènghǎo tóuli guò-lai yí lǎotóur,

Just ahead pass-come one- old-man
'Right then came over an old man.'

zhè lǎotóur, tā zhàn-zhe hái bù dònghuó

this old.man stand- still not move
'this old man, he was standing without moving.' [10]

The constituent yí lǎotóur "an old man" is introduced for the first time into discourse in post-
verbal position. Once it is introduced by the presentational inverted structure, it can be coded
by the proximal demonstrative pronoun zhè 'this' and then by the personal pronoun tā –
denoting an accessible referent: a referent that is already present in speakers'
consciousness.

See also …

Constituent (linguistics)

Dependency grammar

Finite verb

Head (linguistics)

Phrase structure grammar

Verb phrase

Notes …

1. The use of terminology here, subject-auxiliary inversion and subject–verb inversion, follows
Greenbaum and Quirk (1990:410).

2. Birner, Betty Jean (1994). "Information status and word order: an analysis of English inversion".
Language. 2 (70): 233–259.

3. Bresnan, Joan (1994). "Locative Inversion and Architecture of Universal Grammar". Language. 70 (1):
72–131. doi:10.2307/416741 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F416741) .

4. Buell, Leston Chandler (2005). "Issues in Zulu Morphosyntax". PhD Dissertation, UCLA.

5. Shen 1987, p. 197.

6. Lena, L. 2020. Chinese presentational sentences: the information structure of Path verbs in spoken
discourse". In: Explorations of Chinese Theoretical and Applied Linguistics. Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

7. The movement analysis of subject-auxiliary inversion is pursued, for instance, by Ouhalla

(1994:62ff.), Culicover (1997:337f.), Radford (1988: 411ff., 2004: 123ff).

8. Concerning the dependency grammar analysis of inversion, see Groß and Osborne (2009: 64-66).

9. Lambrecht, K., 2000. When subjects behave like objects: An analysis of the merging of S and O in
sentence-focus constructions across languages. Studies in Language, 24(3), pp.611-682.

10. Lena 2020, ex. 10.

References …
 Birner, B. 2018. On constructions as a pragmatic category. Language 94.2:e158-e179.

Birner, B. 1996. The discourse function of inversion in English. Outstanding Dissertations in

Linguistics. NY: Garland.

Culicover, P. 1997. Principles and parameters: An introduction to syntactic theory. Oxford,

UK: Oxford University Press.

Greenbaum, S. and R. Quirk. 1990. A student's grammar of the English language. Harlow,
Essex, England: Longman.

Groß, T. and T. Osborne 2009. Toward a practical dependency grammar theory of

discontinuities. SKY Journal of Linguistics 22, 43-90.

Lena, L. 2020. Chinese presentational sentences: the information structure of Path verbs in
spoken discourse". In: Explorations of Chinese Theoretical and Applied Linguistics.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Ouhalla, J. 1994. Transformational grammar: From rules to principles and parametrs.

London: Edward Arnold.

Prince, E. F. 1992. The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status. In W. C.

Mann and S. A. Thompson, Discourse description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a
fundraising text. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 295-325.

Shen, J. 1987. Subject function and double subject construction in mandarin Chinese. In
Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, 16-2. pp. 195-211.

Quirk, R. S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik. 1979. A grammar of contemporary

English. London: Longman.

Radford, A. 1988. Transformational Grammar: A first course. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Radford, A. 2005. English syntax: An introduction. Cambridge University Press.

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