Genre-dependent Discourse-Topic Persistence in English Inversion

Abstract

Variation in English constituent order is typically explained by information packaging and, with that, by the relation of the construction to the discourse preceding it. This paper presents an empirical approach to the study of the construction of English inversion, focusing on its role in subsequent discourse and its relation to the discourse topic. Building on work on other constructions that are commonly considered to be topic-marking, a dataset of inversions from two genres of the COCA corpus was investigated. The research questions addressed are (i) whether, in the sequence of the two constituents that are reversed by way of an inversion, the fronted, non-subject element or the grammatical subject of the sentence should be considered the topic of the sentence, and (ii) to what extent the topical structure following the inversion varies with the register or genre. Since genres typically differ in text structure, the second research question is also a reality check for the first. Outcomes show that looking at inversion from the point of view of discourse-level topic persistence rather than information packaging adds an important insight to an understanding of its function. In addition, an analysis with respect to discourse- rather than information structure helps to account for genre differences in the use of inversion across discourse types. On a methodological level, the paper illustrates an approach that operationalizes the retrieval of inversions from a corpus and the analysis of discourse-topic persistence.