14.2955, Review: Syntax, Pragmatics: Chen (2003)

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-14-2955. Wed Oct 29 2003. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 14.2955, Review: Syntax, Pragmatics: Chen (2003)

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Date:  Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:10:07 +0000
From:  Mohammad Rasekh Mahand <mrmahand2001 at yahoo.com>
Subject:  English Inversion: A Ground-before-Figure Construction

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:10:07 +0000
From:  Mohammad Rasekh Mahand <mrmahand2001 at yahoo.com>
Subject:  English Inversion: A Ground-before-Figure Construction

Chen, Rong (2003) English Inversion: A Ground-before-Figure
Construction, Mouton de Gruyter, Cognitive Linguistics Research.

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-1942.html


Mohammad Rasekh Mahand, Linguistics Department, Bu-Ali Sina
University, Hamadan, Iran.

INTRODUCTION:

The book tries to analysis English Inversion in the light of Cognitive
Linguistics framework. The cognitive model presented is Ground- before
- Figure (GbF) model, which asserts that sometimes it is cognitively
efficient to present ground before a figure. Its author, Rong Chen ,
is a member of the faculty at California State University, San
Bernardino.

SYNOPSIS:

The book under review is divided into five chapters.  The first
chapter discusses some preliminaries of inversion. It studies some
peculiarities on inversion, some previous research, relevant tenets of
cognitive linguistics and some other issues.

The writer says that the preverbal constituent of the inversion is the
ground, and the post-verbal constituent is the figure. By such a
linear order, inversion directs the hearer's attention to the ground
first, in which the hearer finds a landmark established in the
previous text or in the discourse context. When the figure eventually
appears, it is placed in the focus of attention of the hearer. This
cognitive analysis tries to provide a basis for a unified account of
the behaviors of inversion in its semantics, syntax, phonology as well
as pragmatics.  Section one of the first chapter reviews some issues
of inversion. Inversion has different types, but the subject of this
book is the analysis of full-verb inversion only. Sentence (1) is an
example of this:

	1. On my left was Tom Lopez.

Full- verb inversion has two main characteristics: 1) a constituent of
the predicate, which can be of any grammatical category, is placed
pre-verbally, 2)the subject nominal is placed post-verbally. Inversion
as a marked construction, displays a number of idiosyncratic
features. The first feature is called, polarity constraint. Inversion
does not allow negation of its verb. (See example 2)

	2. *On my left wasn't Tom Lopez.

The second feature is called transitivity constraint; simple tense
transitive verbs cannot occur in inversion. (See example 3)

	3.*Through the revolving door pushed Tom

The writer has also talked about auxiliary constraint; the question
whether the inverted verb can take complex auxiliaries, and
embeddedness constraint. He has addressed some issues of semantic,
phonological, and pragmatic constraints.

In reviewing the earlier works on inversion, the writer discusses
syntactic and functional accounts.  Birner (1996) discusses inversion
in the light of information-packaging and argues that ''inversion
serves an information-packaging function, linking relatively
unfamiliar information to the prior context via the clause-initial
placement of information which is relatively familiar'' (Birner
1996:77). After discussing Birner's views, the writer argues that her
account is flawed and the counterexamples in her data threaten the
integrity of the structure of the account as a whole. In section three
of the first chapter, the writer introduces some of the basic tenets
of cognitive linguistics which are: 1) linguistic categories as radial
than discrete, 2) constructions as instantiations of cognition and 3)
meaning as a result of interaction among semantics, phonology, syntax
and pragmatics.

Chapter two of the book discusses inversion as GbF instantiation. The
writer defines figure as the part of a differentiated visual field
which 'stands out distinctively' from other parts in that field.
Ground refers to these 'other parts'. In an uninverted sentence the
ground is presented before the figure. The GbF model is argued to have
the following elements:
1. Basics: the gestalt of figure and ground.
2. Conditions:
     A.	Ground is anchorable.
     B.Figure is not known to the hearer as present in the ground.
3. Purposes:
     A.	To anchor the ground with a landmark known to the hearer,
	which is often done for the purpose of
     B.	Helping the hearer to locate the figure and/or
	drawing her attention to it.
4.  Results: Increased focus of attention on figure and ground.

In the rest of this chapter, the writer introduces different types of
inversion: Location-Be, Path-Verb (motion), and Non-Spatial-Be. The
different versions of theses prototypes are also discussed. The
phonology of inversion, especially its relation to sentence stress and
intonation, is also discussed. The writer argues that there must be at
last one stressed word in preverbal and one stressed word in
post-verbal position. The most fundamental difference between the GbF
model and the information packaging account of inversion is that the
latter analyzes the construction only at the textual level, it is not
able to provide answers to a host of problems that the construction
poses at other levels of language. The GbF model provides a coherent
cognitive basis to address all these problems.

Chapter three has discussed five syntactic constraints on inversion:
the polarity constraint, the transitivity constraint, the embeddedness
constraint, the auxiliary constraint and the weight constraint.  The
writer first discusses the various observable, surface facts of each
constraint, then relates these facts to the GbF model and argues that
the former are explainable in terms of the latter.

In chapter four, the writer discusses the use of inversion in three
basic types of discourse. It is argued that in description, the
prototype of inversion- the Location-Be type is used. In narration,
both the Location-Be type and the Path-Verb (motion) types are
used. In exposition, the Non-Spatial-Be type is used. These different
forms of inversion are not treated separate from each other.  The
specific function of inversion depends on the purpose of the speaker
engaged in a particular kind of discourse.

Chapter five of the book is the conclusion. The writer summarizes the
previous chapters and also gives the GbF representation in some other
languages.

EVALUATION:

The volume under review is a complete study of inversion in English
from cognitive linguistics point of view. The number of issues covered
in this study is considerable. Discussing the inversion from cognitive
point of view is not something which is previously talked about, and
the book is a milestone from this perspective. One of the main points
of the book is providing several real life examples for each
discussion, which also helps the reader to grasp the theoretical ideas
mentioned in the book.  However, there is one point I like to
mention. In the last chapter of the book, when the writer is giving
examples of inversion in some languages other than English, he gives
some examples of inversion in Persian (taken from Birner and Mahootian
1996). The point which is neglected by these authors, as well as Chen,
is that Persian is a free word order language and ''consequently there
is perhaps no inversion to speak of these languages''. The examples
sited from Persian are not inline with the definition of inversion
given in the book and they are not constrained with syntactic
constraints like polarity and transitivity constraints. Indeed, these
sentences are examples of scrambling in Persian (Karimi 2003).

The book is highly recommended for those interested in
syntax-pragmatics interface. Also the data included in the book can
provide authentic language data accessible to other researchers.

REFERENCES:

Birner, B. and Sh. Mahootian (1996) Functional constraints on
inversion in English and Farsi.  Language Sciences 18.1-2:127-138.

Karimi, Simin (ed.) (2003) Word Order and Scrambling.  Blackwell
Publishers.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mohammad Rasekh Mahand is a member of Linguistics Department at Bu-Ali
Sina Universty, Hamadan, Iran.  His research interests include syntax,
syntax-pragmatics interface and typology.


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