Marked word order choices in English

Some major points from the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English chapter 12, from which are taken* the examples...

 

Discourse Factors
Inside the house Mr Summers found a family of cats shut in the bathroom.

 

Information flows from given (the house and Mr Summers) to new in a sentence. Typically, the focus is on the last lexical item (bathroom). But there are also techniques to front information to also make it the focus (the adverbial Inside the house). Another technique is to front the verb complement: Brilliant that was!

 

The end-weight principle prefers that the long and complex (i.e. heavier) elements placed toward the end ofthhe sentence. This is easier for readers and listeners to process. If placed at the beginning it would become a second focus of the sentence.

 

Word Order Techniques

• Fronting
• Inversion
• Existential there
• Dislocation
• Clefting

"Fronting means placing in intitial positiona a clause element that is normally found after the verb." One can front:

• object - This I do not understand.
• other nominals - Whether Nancy was there or not, she could not be certain.
• predicatives - Far more serious were the severe head injuries.
• non-finite constructions - I have said he would come down and come down he did.
• in dependent clauses using as or though - Try as she might ...

Inversion places the verb phrase (full) or the operator (partial) before the subject. This can also take place in a dependent clause.

• full inversion - Best of all would be to get a job in Wellingham.
• partial inversion - Not before in our history have so many strong influences united to produce so large a disaster.
• dependent clause - ...beside it was a wooden seat on which sat two men talking.

 

One of my favs, the existential there helps to communicate the state of existence or occurance of something. The typical form is: there + be + noun phrase (+ adverbial). Note that this there is different from the adverbial there (i.e. here).
There's a bear sitting in the corner. 
There's still no water there or here or anywhere.

 

Spoken language also uses dislocation, which repeats a noun phrase with a proxy pronoun.
This little shop it's lovely.
I think he's getting hooked on the tast of Vaseline, that dog.

 

Clefting also breaks up a clause into two clauses each with its own verb.
It's a man I want. <compare: I want a man.>