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In Locative inversion, the two expressions switch the order of appearance: it is the locative that appears before the verb while the subject occurs in postverbal position. In Chinese, as in many other languages, the inverted word order carry a presentational function, that is, it is used to introduce new entities into discourse. [10]
The following sentences illustrate subject–verb inversion. They compare canonical order with the more marked inversion order, and they demonstrate that subject–verb inversion is unlikely if the subject is a weak (non-stressed) definite pronoun: a. Jim sat under the tree. b. Under the tree sat Jim. - Subject–verb inversion c. *Under the ...
– The sentence formulated with the auxiliary does now allows inversion. For details of the use of do, did and does for this and similar purposes, see do-support. For exceptions to the principle that the inverted verb must be an auxiliary, see § Inversion with other types of verb below.
Fixed 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.
Inverse copular constructions where the inverted predicative expression is a noun phrase are noteworthy in part because subject-verb agreement can (at least in English) be established with the pre-verb predicative NP as opposed to with the post-verb subject NP, e.g. a. The pictures are a problem. - Canonical word order, standard subject-verb ...
English word order has moved from the Germanic verb-second (V2) word order to being almost exclusively subject–verb–object (SVO). The combination of SVO order and use of auxiliary verbs often creates clusters of two or more verbs at the center of the sentence, such as he had hoped to try to open it. In most sentences, English marks ...
This is the case of “inverted” sentences, where the subject of SV(O) languages appears in post-verbal position. In the following spoken Chinese sentence, the agent of the motion verb lái (come), which usually occupies the preverbal position, occurs after the verb because it denotes a discourse-new entity:
In linguistic typology, subject–verb–object (SVO) is a sentence structure where the subject comes first, the verb second, and the object third. Languages may be classified according to the dominant sequence of these elements in unmarked sentences (i.e., sentences in which an unusual word order is not used for emphasis).