A HISTORY OF INVERSION IN ENGLISH.

摘要

In this thesis I have described and explained an important word order change occurring between Old English and Modern English: the decrease in the occurrence of inverted order. In particular, I have addressed the questions: What are the differences between Old English and Modern English inversion? What are the causes and mechanisms of the changes in inversion? and When did the changes occur?;The first task in this study was to establish the points of linguistic comparison; that is, I had to establish the forms and functions of inversion in Modern English and in Old English so that similarities and differences in inversion between the two periods could be assessed. I have concluded that Modern English has basically two functionally and formally distinct types of inversion: semi-inversion, which is used to locate heavy stress on the preposed constituent, and full inversion, which is used to introduce a new topic in a discourse. Further, I have argued that Old English also had basically two types of inversion but these are quite different from the modern type: optional inversion was used to stress the subject while obligatory inversion had variable stress--either on the subject or on the verb, or possibly on the preposed constituent. After establishing the differences between Old English and Modern English inversions, the task was to explain when, how, and why English lost the subject stress function of inversion and the variable stress obligatory inversions.;In order to investigate the problem of when changes in inversion began to occur, I studied inversion in Transition English, the period between Old and Middle English. I have concluded that Transition English exhibits no signs of changes in inversion until just prior to the traditional beginning of Middle English. Then the changes are swift and dramatic; inversions begin to occur freely with subjects of low stress, and the earlier optional subject stress inversions are joined by new optional inversions that stress the preposed constituent and the verb. In addition, the old obligatory inversions are lost.;Two sources for these inversions are suggested: a language internal source and a language external source. The language internal source is the inversion of the spoken language, in particular, the use of productive first person pronoun subject inversions possibly developed from former subjunctives or performatives and quite possibly associated with conversational English. The external source is the influence and subsequent borrowing of French inversions.;My method for investigating these matters was to survey a number of styles of prose for each stage of the language except Modern English, for which I relied on past research and native intuitions. For each inversion found in the literature, I observed as much about its occurrence as possible by ascertaining in detail the nature of its constituents--the verb, the preposed constituent, and the subject--and by ascertaining the literary peculiarities of the prose in which the inversion is found.;Since Early Middle English inversion still differs from Modern English inversion, I have described further changes in inversion between Late Middle English and Modern English and have established why and how these changes took place. In particular I discuss the overall decrease in the frequency of inversion and the development of the do auxiliary semi-inversion. I have concluded that most recent changes in inversion are related to (1) the restriction of full inversions to a topic shift function while semi-inversions with the dummy auxiliary do came to be used for inversions with low stress subjects and (2) the restriction of semi-inversion to heavy stress preposed constituents. Thus we come to the modern forms and functions of inversion.