The Discourse Function of Inversion in English

Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics

by Betty J. Birner

First published in 1997. This dissertation presents a discourse-functional account of English inversion, based on an empirical study of natural language data. The central finding is that inversion is subject to a pragmatic constraint on the information status of its constituents; specifically, the information represented by the preposed constituent must be at least as familiar within the discourse as is that represented by the postposed constituent.

204 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996