29. Word Order

The words in an English sentence are arranged in a certain order which is fixed for every type of sentence and is, therefore, meaningful. There exist two ways of arranging words—direct order and inverted order.

Word order fulfils various functions. The two main functions of word order are grammatical and communicative. The essence of the grammatical principle lies in the fact that the sentence position of an element is determined by its syntactic function. The communicative principle manifests itself in that the sentence position of an element varies depending on its communicative value.

Direct word Order

The most common pattern for the arrangement of the main parts in a declarative sentence is Subject-Predicate-(Object), which is called direct word order.

I promise to respect your wishes.

Direct word order is also employed in pronominal questions to the subject or its attribute.

Who told you where I was?

Direct word order allows of a few variations in the fixed pattern, but only for the secondary parts.

End—Focus and End-Weight

Inappropriate word order may lead to incoherence, clumsy style and lack of clarity. So when you are deciding in which order to place the ideas in a sentence, there are two useful guiding principles to remember:

• End-focus: the new or most important idea in a piece of information should be placed towards the end, where in speech nuclear stress normally falls. A sentence is generally more effective (especially in writing) if the main point is saved up to the end.

Babies prefer sleeping on their back.

• End-weight: the more “weighty” part(s) of a sentence should be placed towards the end. Otherwise the sentence may sound awkward and unbalanced. The “weight” of an element can be defined in terms of length(e.g. number of syllables) or in terms of grammatical complexity (number of modifiers). Structures with introductory it and there, for instance, allow to avoid having a long subject, and to put what you are taking about in a more prominent position at the end of the sentence.

It becomes hard for a child to develop a sense of identity. There is grief in his face and reproach at the injustice of it all.

Connected with the principle of end-weight in English is the feeling that the predicate of a sentence should be longer or grammatically more complex than the subject. This helps to explain why English native speakers tend to avoid predicates consisting of just a single intransitive verb. Instead of saying Mary sang , they would probably prefer to say Mary sang a song , filling the object position with a noun phrase which adds little information but helps to give more weight to the predicate.

For such a purpose English often uses a general verb( such as have, take, give and do ) followed by an abstract noun phrase:

He is having a swim.----He is swimming.

He took a rest.-----He rested.

He does little work.----He works little.

The sentences on the left are more idiomatic than on the right and they contribute to the impression of fluency in English given by a foreign user.

Order and Emphasis

English grammar has quite a number of sentence processes which help to arrange the message for the right order and the right emphasis. Because of the principle of end-focus and end- weight, the final position in a sentence or clause is, in neutral circumstances, the most important.

But the first position is also important for communication, because it is the starting point for what the speaker wants to say: it is (so to speak) the part of the sentence which is familiar territory in which the hearer gets his bearings. Therefore the first element in a sentence or clause is called the TOPIC (or THEME). In most statements, the topic is the subject of the sentence.

Instead of the subject, you may make another element the topic by moving it to the front of the sentence( fronted topic). This shift, which is called fronting, gives the element a kind of psychological prominence, and has three different effects:

1. In informal conversation it is quite common for a speaker to front an element(particularly a complement) and give it nuclear stress:

An utter fool I felt, too. (topic-complement).

Excellent food the serve here. (topic-object).

2. Fronting also helps to point dramatically to a contrast between two things mentioned in the neighbouring sentences or clauses, which often have parallel structure:

Rich I may be, but that doesn’t mean I am happy. (topic-complement).

His face I am not fond of, but his character I despise.(topic-object)

Willingly he’ll never do it, he’ll have to be forced. (topic-adverbial of manner)

3. The word this or these is often present in the fronted topic, showing that it contains given information. This type of fronting is found in more formal, especially written English and serves the function of linking the sentence to the previous text.

This subject we have examined in an earlier chapter, and need not reconsider (topic-object)

Besides fronting there are other ways of giving prominence to this or that part of the sentence.

*cleft sentences (it-type)

The cleft sentence construction with emphatic it is useful for putting focus (usually for contrast)on a particular part of a sentence expressed by a noun (group) ,a prepositional phrase, and an adverb of time or place, or even by a clause.

It was from France that she first heard the news.

Perhaps it’s because he’s a misfit that I get along with him.

*cleft sentences(wh-type)

What he’s done is –spoil the whole thing.

--to spoil the whole thing.

--spoilt the whole thing.

Wh-clefts can also be used to highlight a subject complement. Instead of Jean and Bob are stingy, we can say: What Jean and Bob are is stingy! This pattern is used when we want to express our opinion of something or somebody.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. (G.B.Shaw)

*Wh-clauses with demonstratives

It is a common type of sentence in English which is similar to wh-cleft sentences.

This is how you start the engine.

*Auxiliary DO

You can emphasize a statement by putting do, does , or did in front of the base form of the verb.

I do feel sorry for Roger.

But it goes move.(G.Galilei).

*The passive

Passive constructions vary the way information is given in a sentence. The passive can be used:

--for end-focus

Who makes these chairs?—They’re made by Ercol.

--for end-weight where the subject is a clause

I was astonished that he was prepared to give me a job. (Better than: That he was prepared to give me a job astonished me.)

--for emphasis on what comes first

All roads to the north have been blocked by snow.

The other common pattern of word order is the inversion. There are 2 types of inversion:

• Subject-verb inversion

Brightly shone the moon that night…

• Subject-operator/ auxiliary inversion

Seldom can there have been such a happy meeting.

Sometimes the inversion may be taken as a normal order of words in constructions with special communicative value, and is devoid of any special colouring.