Word order and inversion

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC

JALAL-ABAD STATE UNIVERSITY

FILOLOGY FACULTY

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERATURE

COURSE WORK

Theme: Word order and inversion

Group: FL-1-13

Student: Mahamatkadirova M.

Supervisor: Kalmuratova A. O.

Jalal-Abad 2017



Content

Introduction

Chapter 1. General characteristic of word order

1.1 Finding the basic word order

1.2 Functions of sentence word order

1.3 Subject-auxiliary and subject-verb inversion

1.4 In other languages

Chapter 2. Inversion and the means of its translation

2.1 Examples for inversion and word order

2.2 Theoretical analyses

Conclusion

Bibliography



Introduction

English word order is strict and rather inflexible. As there are few endings in English that show person, number, case and tense, English relies on word order to show relationships between words in a sentence.

In Russian, we rely on word endings to tell us how words interact in a sentence. You probably remember the example made up by Academician L.V. Scherba in order to show the work of endings and suffixes in Russian. (No English translation for this example.) Everything we need to know about the interaction of the characters in this Russian sentence, we learn from the endings and suffixes. English nouns do not have any case endings (only personal pronouns have some case endings), so it is mostly the word order that tells us where things are in a sentence, and how they interact.

Compare:

The dog sees the cat.

Собака видит кошку.

The cat sees the dog.

Кошка видит собаку.

The subject and the object in these sentences are completely the same in form. How do you know who sees whom? The rules of English word order tell us about it.

In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest. Some languages have relatively restrictive word orders, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others, often those that convey grammatical information through inflection, allow more flexibility which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalization or focus. Most languages however have some preferred word order which is used most frequently. For most languages, basic word order can be defined in terms of the finite verb (V) and its arguments, the subject (S) and object (O). The latter are typically noun phrases, although some languages do not have a major word class of nouns. There are six theoretically possible basic word orders for the transitive sentence: subject verb object (SVO), subject object verb (SOV), verb subject object (VSO), verb object subject (VOS), object subject verb (OSV) and object verb subject (OVS). The overwhelming majority of the world's languages are either SVO or SOV, with a much smaller but still significant portion using VSO word order. The remaining three arrangements are exceptionally rare, with VOS being slightly more common than OVS, and OSV being significantly more rare than two preceding ones.

Inversion which was briefly mentioned in the definition of chiasmus is very often used as an independent SD in which the direct word order is changed either completely so that the predicate (predicative) precedes the subject, or partially so that the object precedes the subject-predicate pair. Correspondingly, we differentiate between a partial and a complete inversion. The stylistic device of inversion should not be confused with grammatical inversion which is a norm in interrogative constructions. Stylistic inversion deals with the rearrangement of the normative word order. Questions may also be rearranged: "Your mother is at home?" asks one of the characters of J. Baldwin's novel. The inverted 'question presupposes the answer with more certainty than the normative one. It is the assuredness of the speaker of the positive answer that constitutes additional information which is brought into the question by the inverted word order. Interrogative constructions with the direct word order may be viewed as cases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w / o ---> grammatical inversion ---> direct w / o.



Chapter 1. General characteristic of word order

English word order is strict and rather inflexible. As there are few endings in English that show person, number, case or tense, English relies on word order to show the relationships between the words in the sentence.

In Russian, we rely on the endings to tell us how the words interact in the sentence. You probably remember the phrase made up by Academician L.V. Scherba to demonstrate the work of the endings and suffixes in Russian. (No English translation for this phrase.) Everything we need to know about the interaction of the characters in this sentence, we learn from the endings and suffixes.

English nouns do not have any case endings (only personal pronouns have some case endings), so it is mostly the word order that tells you where things are in the sentence and how they interact.

Compare these sentences:

The cat sees the dog.

The dog sees the cat.

The subject and the object in these sentences are completely the same in form. How do you know who sees whom? The rules of English word order tell you that.

1.1 Finding the basic word order

It is not always easy to find the basic word order of S, O and V. First, not all languages make use of the categories of subject and object. It is difficult to determine the order of elements one cannot identify in the first place. If subject and object can be identified, the problem can arise that different orders prevail in different contexts. For instance, French has SVO for nouns, but SOV when pronouns are involved; German has verb-medial order in main clauses, but verb-final order in subordinate clauses. In other languages the word order of transitive and intransitive clauses may not correspond. Russian, for example, has SVO transitive clauses but free order (SV or VS) in intransitive clauses.[dubious - discuss] To have a valid base for comparison, the basic word order is defined[by whom?] as

declarative

main clause

S and O must both be nominal arguments

pragmatically neutral, i.e. no element has special emphasis

While the first two of these requirements are relatively easy to respect, the latter two are more difficult. In spoken language, there are hardly ever two full nouns in a clause; the norm is for the clause to have at most one noun, the other arguments being pronouns. In written language, this is somewhat different[citation needed], but that is of no help when investigating oral languages. Finally, the notion of "pragmatically neutral" is difficult to test. While the English sentence "The king, they killed." has a heavy emphasis on king, in other languages, that order (OSV) might not carry a significantly higher emphasis than another order. If all the requirements above are met, it still sometimes turns out that languages do not seem to prefer any particular word order. The last resort is text counts, but even then, some languages must be analyzed as having two (or even more) word orders.

Word order patterns in English sentences

A sentence is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate and expressing a complete thought. Word order arranges separate words into sentences in a certain way and indicates where to find the subject, the predicate and the other parts of the sentence. Word order and context help to identify the meanings of individual words. The main pattern of basic word order in English declarative sentences is SUBJECT + PREDICATE + OBJECT, often called SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT (for example: Tom writes stories). It means that if these three parts of the sentence are present in a statement (a declarative sentence), the subject is placed before the predicate, the predicate (the main verb) follows the subject, and the object is placed after the main verb. Adverbial modifiers are placed after the object, and adjectives are placed before their nouns.

Of course, some sentences may have just one word (Write!), or only the subject and predicate (Tom writes), or have an adverbial modifier and no object (Tom writes well), and there are peculiarities, exceptions and preferences in word order, but the pattern SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT (Tom writes stories) is the most typical and the most common pattern of standard word order in English that serves as a basis for word order in different types of sentences.

Sentence word orders

These are all possible word orders for the subject, verb, and object in the order of most common to rarest: SOV is the order used by the largest number of distinct languages; languages using it include the prototypical Japanese, Mongolian, Basque, Turkish, Korean, the Indo-Aryan languages and the Dravidian languages. Some, like Persian and Latin, have SOV normal word order but conform less to the general tendencies of other such languages. SVO languages include English, the Romance languages, Bulgarian, Chinese and Swahili, among others. VSO languages include Classical Arabic, the Insular Celtic languages, and Hawaiian.

VOS languages include Fijian and Malagasy.

OVS languages include Hixkaryana

OSV languages include Xavante and Warao.

Sometimes patterns are more complex: German, Dutch and Frisian have SOV in subordinates, but V2 word order in main clauses, SVO word order being the most common. Using the guidelines above, the unmarked word order is then SVO. Others, such as Latin and Finnish, have no strict word order; rather, the sentence structure is highly flexible. Nonetheless, there is often a preferred order; in Latin, SOV is the most frequent outside of poetry, and in Finnish SVO is the most frequent, and obligatory when case marking fails to disambiguate argument roles, for example Puun kaatoi mies (tree-acc fell-perf man.NOM) ~ A/the man felled the tree but puut kaatoivat miehet (tree-pl.nom/acc fell-perf-3p.pl man-pl.nom/acc) ~ The trees felled the men. Just as languages may have different word orders in different contexts, so may they have both fixed and free word orders. For example, Russian has a relatively fixed SVO word order in transitive clauses, but a much freer SV / VS order in intransitive clauses

1.2 Functions of sentence word order

A fixed or prototypical word order is one out of many ways to ease the processing of sentence semantics and reducing ambiguity. One method of making the speech stream less open to ambiguity (complete removal of ambiguity is probably impossible) is a fixed order of arguments and other sentence constituents. This works because speech is inherently linear. Another method is to label the constituents in some way, for example with case marking, agreement, or another marker. Fixed word order reduces expressiveness but added marking increases information load in the speech stream, and for these reasons strict word order seldom occurs together with strict morphological marking, one counter-example being Persian. Observing discourse patterns, it is found that previously given information (topic) tends to precede new information (comment). Furthermore, acting participants (especially humans) are more likely to be talked about (to be topic) than things simply undergoing actions (like oranges being eaten). If acting participants are often topical, and topic tends to be expressed early in the sentence, this entails that acting participants have a tendency to be expressed early in the sentence. This tendency can then grammaticalize to a privileged position in the sentence, the subject. The mentioned functions of word order can be seen to affect the frequencies of the various word order patterns: An overwhelming majority of languages have an order in which S precedes O and V. Whether V precedes O or O precedes V however, has been shown to be a very telling difference with wide consequences on phrasal word orders.

Knowledge of word order on the other hand can be applied to identify the thematic relations of the NPs in a clause of an unfamiliar language. If we can identify the verb in a clause, and we know that the language is strict accusative SVO, then we know that Grob smock Blug probably means that Grob is the smocker and Blug the entity smocked. However, since very strict word order is rare in practice, such applications of word order studies are rarely effective.[citation needed]

Phrase word orders and branching

The order of constituents in a phrase can vary as much as the order of constituents in a clause. Normally, the noun phrase and the adpositional phrase are investigated. Within the noun phrase, one investigates whether the following modifiers occur before or after the head noun

adjective (red house vs house red)

determiner (this house vs house this)

numeral (two houses vs houses two)

possessor (my house vs house my)

relative clause (the by me built house vs the house built by me)

Within the adpositional clause, one investigates whether the languages makes use of prepositions (in London), postpositions (London in), or both (normally with different adpositions at both sides). There are several common correlations between sentence-level word order and phrase-level constituent order. For example, SOV languages generally put modifiers before heads and use postpositions. VSO languages tend to place modifiers after their heads, and use prepositions. For SVO languages, either order is common. For example, French (SVO) uses prepositions (dans la voiture, а gauche), and places adjectives after (une voiture spacieuse). However, a small class of adjectives generally go before their heads (une grande voiture). On the other hand, in English (also SVO) adjectives almost always go before nouns (a big car), and adverbs can go either way, but initially is more common (greatly improved). (English has a very small number of adjectives that go after their heads, such as "extraordinaire", which kept its position when it was borrowed from French.)

Free word order

Some languages do not have a fixed word order. In these languages there is often a significant amount of morphological marking to disambiguate the roles of the arguments; however there are also languages in which word order is fixed even though the degree of marking would enable free word order, and languages with free word order, such as some varieties of Datooga, which have free word order combined with a lack of morphological distinction between arguments. Typologically there is a trend that highly animate actors are more likely to be topical than low-animate undergoers, this trend would come through even in free-word-order languages giving a statistical bias for SO order (or OS in the case of ergative systems, however ergative systems do not usually extend to the highest levels of animacy, usually giving way to some form of nominative system at least in the pronominal system)[8]. Most languages with a high degree of morphological marking have rather flexible word orders such as Latin, Hungarian, Russian (in intransitive clauses), and Finnish. In some of those, a canonical order can still be identified, but in others this is not possible.[citation needed] Armenian

Other issues

In many languages, changes in word order occur due to topicalization or in questions. However, most languages are generally assumed to have a basic word order, called the unmarked word order; other, marked word orders can then be used to emphasize a sentence element, to indicate modality (such as an interrogative modality), or for other purposes. For example, English is SVO (subject-verb-object), as in "I don't know this", but OSV is also possible: "This I don't know." This process is called topic-fronting (or topicalization) and is common. In English, OSV is a marked word order because it emphasises the object, and is often accompanied by a change in intonation.

An example of OSV being used for emphasis:

A: I can't see Alice. (SVO)

B: What about Bill?

A: Bill I can see. (OSV, rather than I can see Bill, SVO)

Non-standard word orders are also found in poetry in English, as well as in many other languages..

1.3 Subject-auxiliary and subject-verb inversion

In linguistics, inversion is any of several grammatical constructions where two expressions switch their canonical order of appearance, that is, they invert. 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 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

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

There are several types of subject-verb inversion in English: locative inversion, directive inversion, copular inversion, and quotative inversion.



1.4 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 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 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 the previous sentence would be 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.



Chapter 2. Inversion and the means of its translation

Inversion which was briefly mentioned in the definition of chiasmus is very often used as an independent SD in which the direct word order is changed either completely so that the predicate (predicative) precedes the subject, or partially so that the object precedes the subject-predicate pair. Correspondingly, we differentiate between a partial and a complete inversion. The stylistic device of inversion should not be confused with grammatical inversion which is a norm in interrogative constructions. Stylistic inversion deals with the rearrangement of the normative word order. Questions may also be rearranged: "Your mother is at home?" asks one of the characters of J. Baldwin's novel. The inverted 'question presupposes the answer with more certainty than the normative one. It is the assuredness of the speaker of the positive answer that constitutes additional information which is brought into the question by the inverted word order. Interrogative constructions with the direct word order may be viewed as cases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w / o ---> grammatical inversion ---> direct w / o.t

Word order and inversion

Inversion happens when we reverse (invert) the normal word order of a structure, most commonly the subject-verb word order. For example, a statement has the subject (s) before the verb (v), but to make question word order, we invert the subject and the verb, with an auxiliary (aux) or modal verb (m) before the subject (s):

[S] [V]

She sings.

[AUX] [S] [V]

Does she sing?

[S] [AUX] [V]

They are working.

[AUX] [S] [V]

Are they working?

[S] [M] [V]

Joe can swim.

[M] [S] [V]

Can Joe swim?

When does inversion happen? The most common type of inversion is question word order (see above). Inversion also happens in other situations.

Negative adverbs

In formal styles, when we use an adverb with negative meaning (e.g. never, seldom, rarely, scarcely, hardly) in front position for emphasis, we invert the subject (s) and auxiliary (aux)/modal verb:

[AUX] [S]

Never have we witnessed such cruel behavior by one child to another. (or We have never witnessed …)

Seldom does one hear a politician say `sorry'. (or One seldom hears …)

Examples:

Never before have I felt such fear. - I have never felt such fear before.

Никогда раньше я не испытывал такой страх. - Я никогда не испытывал такой страх раньше.

Never in his life had he seen a more repulsive creature. - He had never in his life seen a more repulsive creature.

Никогда в жизни он не видел более отвратительного создания. - Он никогда в жизни не видел более отвратительного создания.

Not only did he spill coffee everywhere, but he also broke my favorite vase. - He not only spilled coffee everywhere but also broke my favorite vase.

Он не только везде пролил кофе, но он также разбил мою любимую вазу. - Он не только везде пролил кофе, но также разбил мою любимую вазу.

Not only was the princess strikingly beautiful, but she was also extremely intelligent. - The princess was not only strikingly beautiful but also extremely intelligent.

Принцесса была не только поразительно красива, но она была также чрезвычайно умна. - Принцесса была не только поразительно красива, но и чрезвычайно умна.

Not until much later did I understand the significance of that event. - I understood the significance of that event much later.

Только гораздо позже я понял значение / значительность того события. - Я понял значение того события гораздо позже.

No sooner had she put down the phone than it started to ring again. - As soon as she put down the phone, it started to ring again. The phone started to ring again as soon as she put down the receiver.

Не успела она положить / Едва / Как только она положила трубку, телефон зазвонил снова. - Как только она положила трубку, телефон зазвонил снова. Телефон зазвонил снова, как только она положила трубку.

At no time should you let him out of your sight. - You should not let him out of your sight at any time. Don't let him out of your sight even for a second.

Никогда вам нельзя выпускать его из поля зрения. - Вам не следует никогда выпускать его из поля зрения. Не выпускайте его из поля зрения ни на секунду.

Under no circumstances can she be held responsible for his actions. - She cannot be held responsible for his actions.

Ни при каких обстоятельствах она не может считаться ответственной за его действия. - Её нельзя считать ответственной за его действия.

Rarely have I seen such a magnificent view. - I have rarely seen such a magnificent view.

Редко приходилось мне видеть такой великолепный вид. - Я редко видел такой великолепный вид.



2.1 Examples for inversion and word order

Seldom do we realize what our actions might lead to. - We seldom realize what our actions might lead to.

Редко мы осознаём, к чему могут привести наши действия. - Мы редко осознаём, к чему могут привести наши действия.

Little did he know what his fate had in store for him. - He did not know what his fate had in store for him.

Он и представить не мог, что ему приготовила судьба. - Он не знал, что ему приготовила судьба.

Hardly had I stepped into the house when the light went out. - I had hardly stepped into the house when the light went out.

Не успел я войти / Едва я вошёл в дом, как свет погас. - Я едва вошёл в дом, как свет погас.

Scarcely had he said it when the magician appeared. - He had scarcely said it when the magician appeared.

Едва он сказал это, как появился волшебник. - Он едва успел сказать это, как появился волшебник.

Only when I arrived at the hotel did I notice that my travel bag was missing. - I noticed that my travel bag was missing only when I arrived at the hotel.

Только когда я прибыл в гостиницу, я заметил, что пропала моя дорожная сумка. - Я заметил, что пропала моя дорожная сумка, только когда я прибыл в гостиницу.

Only after my guest left did I remember his name. - I remembered my guest's name only after he left.

Только после того, как мой гость ушёл, я вспомнил его имя. - Я вспомнил имя моего гостя только после того, как он ушёл.



2.2 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.[2] 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;[3] the dependent simply appears on the other side of its head. The two competing analyses are illustrated with the following trees: word order sentence inversion

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.

Conclusion

In our course paper I investigated the problem of inversion in the English language from the point of view of its translation into Russian. We compare translations of inverted sentences from two books ("Alice in Wonderland" and "Lady Chatterleys Lover") done by different translators and analyze the efficiency of different methods of translation applied by them. I also discuss the adequacy of each translation analyzing the degree of retaining the original pragmatics of each inverted sentence. As a result, I give recommendations concerning the translation of different kinds of inversion.

I came to the following conclusions:

. When I deal with local inversion I should keep in mind that it is important to put subject in correct place. Especially in the cases when it comes with attributes;

.I should use the method of complete transformation when I deal with the interrogative inversion, from the other hand, the importance of correct usage of such method in translation plays a very important role;

. When I translate a negative inversion I have to bear in view the semantics and scrupulously chose an appropriate conjunction;

. In the case of heavy inversion I have pay a lot of attention on a subject as a rhyme. I shouldn't highlight secondary elements. In the case of using syntactic likeness I have to control the semantics of the words.

. When translate inversion with there it is important to distract the readers attention from secondary subjects but at the same time to use different lexical, stylistic, and syntactical devises to emphasis the subject in the following sentence after "there.



Bibliography

1. I.R. Galperin. Stylistics. M. “Higher school” 1977.

2. V.A. Kukharenko.A Book of Practice in Stylistics. M.”Высшая школа”1987

3. I.V. Arnold. The English Word. M. 1973.

4. E. Nida. Morphology University of Michigan. Press. 1976.

5. Т.М. Беляева «Вопросы английского языка в синхронии и диахронии». Л. 1967. стр. 89.

6. Мюллер. В.К. «Англо - Русский словарь» М. 1962.

7. The World Book Encyclopedia. USA. 1994.

Internet sours

1. http://usefulenglish.ru/grammar/basic-word-order

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

3. http://www.ranez.ru/article/id/214/

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

5. http://www.ranez.ru/article/id/120

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion_(meteorology)

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