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Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2010On inversion
Hello! I would like to know the reason of inversion of sentence (a), which I suppose comes from sentence (b). I wonder if it is because the subject noun phrase "an explanation of how the rich-poor gap has come into being" is too long to come first as a subject phrase. In that case, which would be better, (c) or (d)? a. Missing from the book is an explanation of how the rich-poor gap has come into being. b. An explanation of how the rich-poor gap has come into being is missing from the book. c. Missing from the book is an explanation of the process. d. An explanation of the process is missing from the book. I appreciate your help in advance. LP > Hello! I would like to know the reason of inversion of sentence (a), > which I suppose comes from sentence (b). I wonder if it is because [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > > LP The sentence begins with "Missing" because it is the key to the thought. The reader is informed that the important part of the thought is that something is missing. In general, when a sentence's word order is unusual, the reason is the author's desire to place emphasis on the first element of the sentence. GFH > > Hello! I would like to know the reason of inversion of sentence (a), > > which I suppose comes from sentence (b). I wonder if it is because [quoted text clipped - 24 lines] > > GFH This kind of inversion is possible whenever a) the sentence is an equative "X is Y" type b) the old information in the sentence is not part of the subject (X, which comes first). c) there is some old information in the Y part (e.g, "the book" has been recently mentioned in the context of the sentence) In these cases it's natural to put the old information first, linking with the prior context, then to follow it with the new information at the end. There are lots of ways to achieve this, of which inversion is one. There are several other types of inversion that can occur, with this and with other constructions. And plenty of others that can't. -John Lawler * http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls." -- M. Cartmill >Hello! I would like to know the reason of inversion of sentence (a), >which I suppose comes from sentence (b). Sentences express thoughts, that the writer has or that he wants to convey. While a is different from the common sentence order, I don't see any reason to think the sentence itself is inverted from a prior sentence. What's on the writer's mind, and what he wants to emphasize is that something is missing from the book. Sentence a is fine. Of course, sometimes placing something last can also emphasize it. :) > I wonder if it is because >the subject noun phrase "an explanation of how the rich-poor gap has [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > >LP  SignaturePosters should say where they live, and for which area they are asking questions. I was born and then lived in Western Pa. 10 years Indianapolis 7 years Chicago 6 years Brooklyn, NY 12 years Baltimore 26 years > On Sat, 29 May 2010 04:59:57 -0700 (PDT), Lazypierrot > [quoted text clipped - 38 lines] > Brooklyn, NY 12 years > Baltimore 26 years That's right. The two most prominent places in a sentence are the beginning and the end. Stuff at the beginning gets a head start in processing, and is usually understood (and thus remembered, and prominent in thought) by the time the sentence is completed. Stuff at the end, however, is still in the audio buffer and can be rehearsed internally as many times as needed, so it gets retrieved easily and is thus also prominent. There are literally hundreds of syntactic rules and thousands of idioms in English that have as one of their functions signalling, by moving stuff to the beginning or end, that certain sentence chunks are important and memorable, beyond their function in the rest of the sentence. See, for instance, http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler/haj/TransformationsinMuenchen(Hoefler)Longerlist-2.pdf -John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler "Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
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