Some baffling aspects of inverted sentences
MANY years ago, a student in Cambodia preparing for a special English-language scholarship test expressed puzzlement over these two sentences: “Particularly unfortunate was my failure to report exactly the amount of water in the DNA upon which Rosy had done her measurement.” “Equally important, however, including a securities market, to stimulate economic development.”
Vika D. wrote: “These two sentences are strange to me because ‘ particularly unfortunate’ and ‘equally important’ are adjective phrases. What I know is that adjectives cannot be used as subjects, so why are they being used as subjects in those two sentences?”
What Vika had stumbled upon are not travesties of grammar but simply inverted sentences of the kind that baffles many learners
normal form is this: “Myfailure toreportexactlytheamountof waterintheDNAuponwhich Rosyhaddonehermeasurement was particularly unfortunate.” Its subject is the 19-word noun phrase in italics; its operative verb, “was”; and its complement, the adjective phrase “particularly unfortunate.” The second sentence has this normal form: “However, thelack
includingasecuritiesmarket, tostimulateeconomicdevelopment is equally important.” The 14-word noun phrase is the subject; “is,” the operative verb; and the adjective phrase “equally important,” the complement.
Vika correctly pointed out that being adjective phrases, neither “particularly unfortunate” and “equally important” can be the subject of a sentence. They are in fact functioning as adjective complements as they should, but each hasbeen transposed to the beginning of the sentence. There’s no grammar violation in doing this, however; it’s a perfectly acceptable departure from the usual subject-verb-complement (SV/C) pattern of sentences.
The structural differences between normal and inverted sentences are, of course, plain enough to see, but the bigger question is: What’stobegainedbyinverting sentencesthisway?
Look very closely atthenormal-orderform of Vika’ssentences. They are tough to read andunderstand; their subjects ramble too slowly and too long for us to make a clear sense of what’s being said, and their operative verbs come too late in providing that sense. We become breathless when we read such sentences. They are, in a word, the stuff that bad writing is made of.
comprehend because in English as in every other language, it’s only after the operative verb or its complement shows up or is heard that the sense of the sentence can be grasped clearly. When the subject is so longwinded, such as the 19word and 14-word behemoths in the normal form of Vika’s sentences,that verb and that complement will be very late in coming to do their job. Discerning writers and speakers are familiar with this phenomenon, so when they sense that their ideas are forcing the operative verb and its complement too far out in the sentence, they bite the bullet, so to speak, and take recourse to the inverted sentence.
When used sparingly, inverted sentences can serve as powerful tools for emphasis in ways not achievable by their normal-order counterparts. They can strongly draw our attention to the word or phrase in the sentence that the writer or speaker deems most important. Take this normal-order sentence, for instance: “He seldom confronted bullies; he always tormented weaklings.” Feel the change of rhythm and emphasis when we turn things around by inverting that sentence in this complement-subject-verb order: “Bullies he seldom confronted; weaklings he always tormented.”
When a sentence like that suddenly pops out in a sea of normal- pattern sentences, we’ll discover right away why it grabs attention and stays in the mind long after the rest of the sentences around it are forgotten.
In surprise lies the power of inverted sentences.
(Next:
Inverted sentences as transitional devices)
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