Some wherefores of English inversions

Abstract

This paper discusses the usage of some constructions which display non-canonical word order, despite having grammatical counterparts with canonical order—S V (O) (ADV)—whose truth conditions are identical: (1a) Outside stood a little angel vs. (1b) A little angel stood outside. It is claimed here that non-canonical constructions like 1a allow language users to exploit alternative word orders for multiple purposes, ranging from the facilitation of encoding to the creation of many specific rhetorical effects. A large number of syntactic constructions may be transformed into inverted structures of two target types, and these may be exploited to serve a variety of pragmatic functions.

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