Distribution of the elements

A. Various types of inversion

Change of word-order (inversion). English, as opposed to Russian (or Latin), is characterized by fixed order of words. This doesn’t mean that changes of word-order are impossible in English. This means, however, that every relocation of sentence parts in English is of greater importance, of a more significant stylistic value than in Russian.

Every noticeable change in word-order is called “inversion”. It is important to draw a line of demarcation between “grammatical inversion” and “stylistic inversion”.

Grammatical inversion is that which brings about a cardinal change in the grammatical meaning of the syntactical structure. So, whenever we change the word-order to transform a declarative sentence into interrogative, the result is grammatical inversion: You are here – Are you here?

Stylistic inversion does not change the grammatical essence (the grammatical type) of the sentence: it consists in an unusual arrangement of words for the purpose of making one of them more conspicuous, more important, more emphatic. Compare the sentence They slid down with its variant Down they slid. There is no grammatical change, but the word down sounds very strong in the second sentence.

The unusual first place in the sentence may be occupied by a

predicative:

Inexplicable was the astonishment of the little party when they returned to find out that

Mr.Pickwick had disappeared. (Dickens)

Simple verbal predicate

Came frightful days of snow and rain.

Adverbial modifier

Over by St Paul he stands and there is no money in it… (Galsworthy)

Direct object

But Johnsie he smote, and she lay, scarcely moving in her painted iron bedstead

(O.Henry)

CHANGES IN THE USE OF SYNTACTIC FORMS