Lesson37 Postponement, Fronting and Inverting

1. Lesson37 Postponement, Fronting and Inverting

2. Piece of information • Tone unit: written work oral speech 1 End Focus: new information usually appears at the back part of a sentence, within which the most important part appears at the end.

3. End weight: from the point of structure, a complicated structure, such as numberal words, and complicated grammatical parts usually appear at the end of a sentence.

4. According to these two principles, new information usually is put at the end of sentences. They pushed the car. They gave the car a push.

5. 2 Postponement: • People like to put the most important information at the end of a sentence, this is called postponement. He gave me a book. -- What did he give you? He gavbe a book to me. Who did he give a book to?

6. Thus we can combine the following two sentences into one. The cross-examination was expertly handled. It lasted only half an hour. Q: How long did the cross-examination last? The expertly handled cross-examination lasted only half an hour.

7. Exercise Combine the sentences into one with necessary changes according to the stressed points indicated below. Women may soon be able to compete with men in most sporting events. Men may deny it. • Stressing women’s role in sporting events. • Stressing men’s denial.

8. 3 Fronting and Inverting • Fronting: put an element which usualy appears at back part of a sentence to the front of the sentence. Sometimes, it can cause inverting, while sometimes it doesnot cause inverting.

9. Usually Object, subject complement, object complement don’t cause inverting. • A horrible mess you’ve made of it. • Books, he had treasured from the earlies period of his life. • Very strange it seems.

10. 2) Inverting: the fronting element is adverbial will usually cause inverting. • a) when the word at the beginning of a sentence is used to show position, of sound, and the predicate is go, come, etc, to show the change of position. There was a sudden gust of wind and away went his hat.

11. b)When preposition phrase is put at the beginning , to show place. • In this chpater will be found a partial answer. • From the valley came a tinkling sound, a soothing moo, the lull of alien voices.

12. 3) The negative word is put at the beginning of a sentence. Never have I found him in such a good mood. Not for one minute do I think I have any hope of getting promoted.

13. 4) only+adv.; only+ prep.; only+adverbial Only yesterday did he find out htat his watch was missing. Only through sheer luck did he manage to get some tickets.

14. 5) So…that, so +adj. So+adv at the beginning of a sentence. • So dangerous were the avalanches that skiing had to be stopped. • So much does he worry about his financial position tha the can’t sleep at night.

15. 6) Adverbial to show method and frequency are put at the beginning of a sentence. • Gladly would I pay more if I could get better service by doing so. • Many a time has Mike given me good advice.

16. Excercise Rewrite the following sentences using inversion if possible. • Come and teach in our school. You wont’ find such fine pupils anywhere else. • Tom failed the exam. He had not worked hard ay any tim eteh revioius term.