Discourse Function of Inversion in English

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.

About the author

Birner, Betty

Summary

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.

Product details

• Authors: Betty J. Birner, Betty Birner, Birner Betty J.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Content: Book
• Product form: Paperback / Softback
• Publication date: 24.11.2015
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics
• EAN: 9781138967755
• ISBN: 978-1-138-96775-5
• Pages: 204
• Series: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics; Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
• Subjects: Language, Discourse Analysis, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / General, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General, Language and Linguistics, syntactic variation, linguistic theory, Information Structure, constituent order, pragmatic constraints, English inversion pragmatics research