Functional Constraints on Inversion in English and Farsi  

Oleh:

Birner, Betty J. ; Mahootian, Shahrzad

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 18 no. 1-2 (1996), page 127-138.
Topik: Inversion; topicalization; Farsi; discourse; function; inferrable; construction.
Fulltext: 18_01-02_Birner.pdf (711.28KB)

Isi artikel

In this paper we demonstrate that discourse-functional constraints on inversion in Farsi correspond to those on inversion in English despite differences in word order. Farsi canonically exhibits SXV word order, but permits a marked ordering of XSV. Although this word order is like that of English topicalization, it does not share the discourse function of topicalization in English; instead, Farsi XSV word order corresponds functionally to English inversion. In both languages inversion requires the preposed constituent to represent more familiar information in the discourse than does the postposed constituent; moreover, in both languages inversion serves to reverse the relative ordering of these constituents. The difference in word order between inversion in Farsi and inversion in English reduces to a difference in the position of the verb, and reflects independent syntactic constraints. Hence, Farsi XSV word order and English XVS word order represent a single inversion construction.

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