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A Columbia School Grammar-motivated account of quotation inversion in English

Core area: Syntax

Abstract (150 words):

Few studies of subject-verb inversion in English include instances where a subject can appear before or after the verb when associated with material in quotation marks (“Yes”, said John as opposed to “Yes”, John said), and whereby the subject and verb can appear before, after, or within quoted material. Under an assumption that communicative goals determine word order (Diver 1995), this paper argues that subject-verb ordering in these constructions, and its placement relative to the quote, act as signals guiding the reader into assessing the information both within and following the ordering in particular ways. Using Huffman’s (2002, 2012) Degree of Focus System and Chafe’s (1994) Light Subject Constraint as theoretical frameworks, this paper expands Huffman’s hypothesis that subject-verb ordering signals MORE FOCUS (subject-verb) and LESS FOCUS (verb-subject). This analysis also argues that MORE and LESS FOCUS can affect the reader’s interpretation of quoted material that follows the subject-verb complex.

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1. Introduction This analysis presents a Columbia School Grammar-motivated account of what has

traditionally been called quotation inversion and non-inversion in English (where quoted

material can be preceded, followed, or split by a subject-verb complex that is in canonical

[subject-verb] or inverted [verb-subject] order):

(1) “I nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State,” the President of the United States said at a news conference yesterday.

. (2) “I nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State,” said the President of the United States at a news conference yesterday. (3) The President of the United States said at a news conference yesterday, “I nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State.”

(4) Said the President of the United States at a news conference yesterday, “I nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State.” (5) “I,” the President of the United States said at a news conference yesterday, “nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State.”

(6) “I,” said the President of the United States at a news conference yesterday, “nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State.” (1)-(6) contain the same quote (I nominate John Kerry as Secretary of State), the same

subject (the utterer of the quote, the President of the United States), and the same verb (said).

However, each differs in the ordering of the subject and verb relative to each other, and the

placement of the subject-verb complex relative to its quote. (1), (3), and (5) demonstrate subject-

verb word order, while (2), (4), and (6) show verb-subject order. In (1) and (2), the subject-verb

complex appears after the entire quote; in (3) and (4), the complex appears before the entire

quote, and in (5) and (6), the complex ‘splits’ the quote.

A detailed analysis of these types of subject-verb complexes, appearing with quotes

within newspaper articles, will show that the ordering of the subject and verb, and its placement

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vis-à-vis the quote, instantiate principled ways in which speakers (and, by extension, writers)

exploit word-order choice to direct the hearer’s (and reader’s) attention toward or away from

specific points of information (Huffman 2002, 2012a). The ordering of the subject-verb complex

serves as a signal of Focus to the hearer, directing him/her to pay more attention to the

information within the complex (via subject-verb ordering, signaling MORE FOCUS), or to pay less

attention (through verb-subject ordering, signaling LESS FOCUS) (Huffman 2002, 2012a, 2012b).1

The present analysis also hypothesizes that the placement of the subject-verb complex, in

whichever order, relative to its quote is also important: it provides a framework through which

the reader interprets the quoted material. Quoted material coming before the subject-verb

complex provides justification for a previous claim made by the writer, while quoted material

coming after the complex is affected by the Focus value signaled by the complex.

Part 2 of this analysis reviews previous literature on verb-inversion in English. Part 3

replicates and expands Huffman’s analysis using a particular subset of subject-verb ordering:

quotation inversion in newspaper articles. Part 4 consists of my analysis of the placement of

subject-verb complexes relative to their quotes, and hypothesizes that the meanings MORE and

LESS FOCUS signaled by the complexes can affect the reader’s evaluation of quoted information

coming after them. Part 5 will provide concluding remarks.

1According to Huffman (personal communication), the use of the terms MORE and LESS FOCUS is somewhat of a misnomer, since the meaning that is being signaled in subject-verb complexes is attention-worthiness, not necessarily focus. However, Huffman (2002) uses the terms MORE and LESS FOCUS, and I will as well for consistency.

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2. Previous accounts of quotation inversion: Full-verb inversion, as Huffman (2012b) noted, is “one of the most oft-studied

phenomena in English linguistics, particularly from a functionalist perspective” (Review,

Text/Corpus Ling). Previous accounts of quotation inversion in English have fallen into two

general camps. Syntactically-motivated treatments discuss the potential positions that subjects

and verbs in quotation inversion constructions can occupy within a sentence. Pragmatically-

motivated treatments discuss the potential effects on a hearer when a speaker uses a canonical

(subject-verb) or inverted (verb-subject) form. This section will discuss previous accounts of

quotation inversion, both syntactic and pragmatic, and will introduce Huffman’s (2002, 2012a,

2012b) Degree of Focus System and Chafe’s (1994) Light Subject Constraint, on which much of

parts 3 and 4 are based.

2.1 Syntactic treatments of quotation inversion

In general, syntactic treatments of quotation inversion posit relationships between (base-

generated) constituents of a sentence and the potential positions they can occupy. Although how

constituents interact with these positions may vary from grammar to grammar, these

relationships are governed by rules and constraints that hold cross-grammatically.

Syntactic treatments of quotation inversion generally agree that the subject in subject-

verb inversion constructions remains in-situ (or moves locally to a nearby position), while the

verb raises to some higher position. Collins and Branigan (1997) posit that the subject of the

subject-verb complex stays in-situ while the verb "raises to AgrO in the overt syntax" (9). For the

sentence Don’t turn back, warned Marcel:

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(7)

(Collins and Branigan 1997: 9)

the subject Marcel remains in Spec-V, while warned raises past it to AgrO. Covertly, further

raising occurs: "the verb raises further, to T and AgrS, while the subject raises to Spec-AgrS to

have its Case/agreement features checked" (Collins and Branigan 1997: 9).

Collins (1997) also believes the verb moves in front of the subject in inversion

constructions, but claims that "external argument[s are] not generated under the VP with the

direct object but, rather, [are] generated as the specifier of a head that I will call Tr (transitivity)"

(13). This follows from his theory that syntactic frameworks which postulate global economic

considerations (in which "if one derivation is shorter than another, the shorter blocks the longer,

and the PF and LF corresponding to the blocked derivation are interpreted as unacceptable" (1))

will (incorrectly) assume that derivations with more steps will be regarded as ungrammatical.

According to Collins, all inverted-word-order constructions should then be considered

ungrammatical, since they take more steps to obtain than their non-inverted counterparts (1997:

30).

For a structure that can yield both John rolled down the hill and down the hill rolled John:

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(8)

(Collins 1997: 27) once roll moves to Spec-TrP, either the NP John or the PP down the hill can move to Spec-T:

since "both John in Spec VP and the PP are in the minimal domain of the same head (the verb)

[...] it follows that John does not block movement of the PP to Spec T, even though John has a D

feature that could enter into a checking relation with the strong EPP feature of T" (Collins 1997:

27). If John moves, the resulting sentence has canonical subject-verb order; if down the hill

moves, the inverted word-order obtains.

The position of the quote, whether accompanied by canonical or inverted subject-verb

complexes, presents more of a challenge. Both Collins and Branigan (1997) and Collins (1997)

hypothesize the existence of a 'quotation operator': an empty category coindexed with the quote

that can be fronted to the beginning of a sentence. Collins and Branigan postulate that this empty

operator must have a feature [+quote] that allows it to check an appropriate complementizer in

much the same way that [+wh] and [+neg] features must be checked (Collins and Branigan 1997:

12).

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This 'fronting' of an empty category can account for the movement of quotes to the

beginning of a sentence, whether or not the subject-verb complex is inverted. However, Collins

and Branigan (1997) also claim that

movement of the quotation operator to Spec-C need not trigger inversion [...] when it does trigger inversion, though, the [+quote] complementiser must apparently be 'reinforced' by the verb which θ-marks the trace of the operation. The verb reinforces C by adjoining to it in the covert syntax. To distinguish inversion-triggering [+quote] complementisers from their less active counterparts, we suppose that the former bear an additional [+quote] V-feature, which must also be checked. The V-feature of C can be checked only if an appropriate head adjoins to C. The appropriate head in this case is the principal verb, which raises to C in the covert syntax. (13)

If subject-verb inversion occurs, the quotation operator must then also be able to be checked by

the verb.

Collins (1997) also posits the existence of a quotation operator that can move to the front

of a sentence: however, instead of movement to Spec-CP, he claims that "the quote undergoes

movement to Spec TP to check the strong EPP features of T. This analysis is conceptually more

desirable than [movement to Spec-CP] in that it allows us to make the strongest possible

assumption about the [Extended Projection Principle] in English: that every occurrence of T has

a strong EPP feature" (38). However, he notes that the specific nature of the relationship between

the quote and its sentence is still very much in question (39).

Suñer (2000), for her part, claims that Collins and Branigan’s (1997) explanation of

quotation inversion may be inadequate for explaining its occurrence in Spanish (558). To

capture cases of inversion in Spanish, she claims that V does not move to AgrO, but to another

projection (AspP), while the subject is located in SpecvP (where vP is projected directly above

VP).

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Suñer also questions the Collins and Branigan’s (1997) account of quote-fronting, since

it does not give an adequate analysis of ‘split’ quotes (when only part of a quote is fronted to the

beginning of a sentence). If, as Collins and Branigan argue, a [+quote] operator must check its

features with the entire quote, it is unclear to Suñer how this checking process functions in

instances where only part of the quote is fronted. Suñer argues that any quotation expression (the

element that checks the quote’s features and allows it to raise) must occupy a position above

Spec-C: she hypothesizes that the quotation expression ultimately raises to Spec-F(ocus)P.

Claiming that “the intonation patterns of preverbal and postverbal quotes differ” (2000: 541), in

that postverbal quotes receive their own stress, she proposes that the quotation expression must

be in a position to accept focus: Spec-FP is the most likely place where this can happen. In

instances of quote-splitting, an additional feature, [+focus] must be checked by the quotation

operator. She notes, “When F0 carries only the feature [+quote], the quote itself adjoins or is

linked to the tail of the raised null Op chain, but when it is [+quote, +focus], the quote adjoins or

is linked to the head of the chain or wraps around the quoting expression […] by simultaneously

using both the head and the tail of the chain as linkage sites” (2000: 543). For Suñer, then, quotes

act similarly to adjuncts: they are “generated independently from the quotation expression”

(2000: 566).

Syntactic treatments of quotation inversion, then, posit a variety of ways in which verbs

can end up before subjects, and in which quotes can appear before, after, or between subject-verb

complexes. The analysis presented below, however, is more interested in how speakers use

subject-verb and verb-subject orders for communicative goals, and what can potentially motivate

the use of one construction over another in a particular instance. Pragmatic treatments of

subject-verb inversion, discussed below, also to some extent attempt to discover this.

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2.2 Pragmatic treatments of subject-verb inversion

Many treatments (Hartvigson and Jakobsen 1974; Birner 1996; Chen 2003; Kreyer 2006;

Prado-Alonso 2011, inter alia) claim that (inverted) verb-subject constructions demonstrate

pragmatic qualities distinct from those of from their (canonical) subject-verb counterparts. Some

accounts (such as Hartvigson and Jakobsen 1974) simply provide a taxonomy of inversion types.

Others, such as Green (1990), assign various functions to inversion (including giving more time

for speakers to remember subjects, performing connective functions that relate the importance of

postposed individuals to preceding events, and scene-setting), but do not unite them under a

single, more generalizable rubric.

Still others try to find principled accounts of the function of subject-verb inversion.

Birner (1996) claims that “inversion serves as information-packing function: that of presenting

information which is more familiar in the discourse before information which is less familiar”

(138). Using Prince’s (1992) typology of assumed information as a guide, Birner argues that verb

inversion is employed by speakers to keep information previously invoked in discourse (i.e.,

given) before that which had not previously been invoked (i.e., new). Chen (2003) provides a

‘ground-before-figure’ model of inversion: borrowing from previous work in cognitive

linguistics, he claims that subject-verb inversion allows the speaker to “present[] the ground first

by anchoring it with a landmark that is established most often in the previous linguistic context

and sometimes in the discourse context” (48). Inversion constructions, according to Chen, allow

the speaker to present the environment in which hearers ‘look’ for a figure (the ground) before

referencing the figure itself. Prado-Alonso (2011) divides inversion types into two categories.

When adverbs, prepositions, and verbal participles participate in inversion, they allow the hearer

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to first be presented to a larger environment or figure, then have their focus directed to something

in particular within that environment or figure. Adjective and noun inversion, however, tend to

present last information that may be new to the hearer.

Pragmatic treatments of inversion, then, work from either a ‘given-then-new’ framework

or a ‘focusing’ framework. What is striking, however, is their lack of consideration for quotation

inversion. Dorgeloh (1997) excludes quotation inversion from her analysis for “pragmatic

reasons” (22), though she does not elaborate on those reasons. Kreyer (2006) claims quotation

inversion is a “highly exceptional case in comparison to the other types of inversion” (10) since,

as he notes, they occur almost exclusively in journalistic and fictional writings, their direct

objects are always quotations, and verbs in inversion are restricted to verbs of saying. Thus, he

excludes them from his analysis (2006: 11).

Birner (1996) provides the most thorough justification for why quotation inversion

should be excluded from the larger discussion of verb inversion. She claims that “quotations

permit a variety of orderings beyond [canonical word order] and inversion” that mark them from

other types of inversions; she notes that “the constituents of quotation inversion may appear in

any order—including having the NP and verb appear parenthetically inside the quotation—so

long as the subject NP and the verb remain adjacent” (21). She also claims that quotation

inversion occurs within a highly restrictive environment, “with direct or indirect quotation, and

requir[ing] a verb of saying (say, write, note, recall, etc.)” (22). These distributional facts lead

her to conclude that quotation inversion “differs significantly from other inversions at virtually

every level of the grammar” (23).

Other researchers (Chen 2003, Kreyer 2006, inter alia) have used Birner’s reasoning to

exclude quotation inversion from their own analyses. But Birner seems to be conflating two

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different phenomena in her reasoning. She treats the ordering of the subject-verb complex in

quotation inversion constructions, as well as their position relative to their quote (before, after, or

within), as manifestations of a single phenomenon that leads her to view quotation inversion as

fundamentally different from other types of inversion. The present analysis, on the other hand,

argues that the ordering of the subject-verb complex should be treated as a separate and

independent object of study from its position relative to its quote. They may (and, as the present

analysis argues, do) interact in interesting ways, but the constitution of the subject-verb complex

itself, and its functional effects, should remain distinct from where it appears with respect to its

quote (which can produce a different functional effect).

2.3 Columbia School Grammar, Huffman (2002)’s Degree of Focus System, and Chafe’s

(1994) Typology of Information:

Broadly speaking, the Columbia School (CS) Grammar framework also seeks to provide

functional explanations for linguistic phenomena, and in this regard fits in with other schools of

cognitive and functional grammars. In the CS framework, language is a "particular kind of

instrument of communication, an imprecise code by means of which precise messages can be

transmitted through the exercise of human ingenuity" (Diver 1995: 43). CS assumes that

communication from speaker to hearer is imperfect and imprecise or, as Huffman (2002) writes

“semantic input underdetermines communicative output” (311). The speaker has a choice of

various meanings encoded in linguistic signals (either morphemic or positional) available to

construct a message, and it is up to the hearer to interpret those meanings as best he/she can to

arrive at a message. CS analysis identifies these morphemic/positional signals, analyzes how

they can be used to construct messages, and postulates meanings that are consistently and in

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every instance of use associated with particular signals or, as in the phenomenon under study in

the present work, with ordering of signals.

Huffman (2012b) criticizes previous treatments of full-verb inversion that segregate

different inversion types from each other, and exclude others. Instead, he proposes to explain all

instances of subject-verb ordering through his Degree of Focus system:

(9)

(fr. Huffman 2002: 322) According to Huffman (2002, 2012a, 2012b), the particular ordering the subject and verb

expresses one of two meanings of the semantic substance he calls the Degree of Focus: “the

degree of attention-worthiness or importance the speaker/writer wishes to assign to the

information contained in the [subject-verb] complex. The speaker can signal: ‘This is more

worthy of attention’, or ‘This is less worthy of attention’” (2002: 321). MORE FOCUS is signaled

by subject-verb (in Huffman's terms PE, for Participant-Event) order, meaning that the hearer is

directed to pay more attention to the information contained within the complex; LESS FOCUS, on

the other hand, is signaled by verb-subject (EP, or Event-Participant) order, directing the hearer

to pay less attention to the information contained within the complex.

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Huffman considers a number of reasons why a speaker may choose to impart a particular

Degree of Focus meaning via subject-verb or verb-subject word order. When he/she wants to

merely note the existence of a subject onto a particular scene, EP/LESS FOCUS is likely to occur;

PE/MORE FOCUS, on the other hand, is more likely to occur “when something additional, more

attention-worthy than mere being is intended” (2003: 327). Additionally, the speaker may want

to call particular attention to the manner in which something is done: in that case, he/she is likely

to use PE/MORE FOCUS to draw attention to the verb (2012a).

Particularly interesting is Huffman’s (2002) observation that, when an individual who is

important to the discourse is first introduced, there is a strong tendency to introduce him with

verb-subject (EP) order: this first mention “will simply serve to establish that character’s

existence, to place him on the scene, but will not yet constitute the main information about him.

EP will be used, because merely indicating the existence of an entity, that is, just introducing an

entity onto the scene without saying much else about it, justifies calling for only a low degree of

concentration of attention on that entity” (2002: 323).

At first, this observation seems counterintuitive: why would a speaker want to introduce

something of importance to the discourse by first placing it within a frame of LESS FOCUS?

Writing from a related but different theoretical perspective, Chafe (1994) provides a possible

cognitive motivation behind this. He distinguishes among three types of information that are

available to speakers and hearers at any given moment: active, semiactive, and inactive. Active

information is already well-known to the speaker and hearer, and represents given information

when uttered at a particular time. Semiactive information is also known to the speaker and

hearer, but may not be as familiar as active information (for example, if it had been uttered only

once or twice in previous discourse): he calls this information accessible. Inactive information is

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not shared between the speaker and hearer until its utterance, and is therefore new to the hearer.

The status of information as given, accessible, or new has a direct bearing on what Chafe calls

activation cost (1994: 73). Information that had previously been given (and which is thus active)

allows the hearer to expend the least amount of cost in processing that information, since it is

already familiar. Processing accessible information at its time of utterance is more costly to the

hearer than processing given information, since the hearer would presumably spend somewhat

more effort to recall accessible information. Processing new information is the costliest of all to

the hearer: he must accommodate in his/her mind information that had not previously been

evoked in the discourse (Chafe 1994: 73).

Following Chafe’s rationale, it would seem most beneficial to keep activation cost

at a minimum for hearers: a gradual change in information status (from inactive/new to

semiactive/accessible to active/given) is preferable to a sudden change (from

inactive/new directly to active/given). This strategy of minimizing activation cost also

underlies what Chafe calls the light subject constraint, where “subjects carry a light

information load” (1994: 85). Subjects, in his view, can either be given within the

previous discourse, accessible (less common), or new-but-trivial (reserved for referents

that speakers do not “expect will play any continuing role in the discourse to follow”

(1994: 90)). Information that is new but not trivial, on the other hand, is likely to occupy

the object position of a given unit of discourse.

According to Chafe’s light subject constraint hypothesis, information that comes

after the verb (i.e., the traditional object position) is thus highly likely to be new to the

hearer. When this new information is presented, it then becomes semiactive (i.e.,

accessible) to the hearer. Presenting this information to the hearer in a verb-subject

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complex (signaling LESS FOCUS), then, seems to be a strategy to prompt the hearer into

paying some, but not much, attention to that information. The hearer is now aware that

this accessible information exists, but does not know if it will play any significant role in

the discourse that follows. Having his/her attention directed at a relatively low level to

that information allows it to either be raised to a higher activation state (if it is mentioned

again, it will then likely be something of importance that the hearer should pay attention

to, and highly likely to be signaled with PE/MORE FOCUS) or become inactive again (if it

is no longer mentioned), both with a relatively minimal activation cost. Putting inactive

information (that is new to the hearer) in the subject position, on the other hand, is highly

disfavored, since (according to Chafe) that would be more cognitively costly to the hearer.

Part 3 of this paper will replicate and expand the validity of Huffman’s (2002) Degree of

Focus System and Chafe’s (1994) light subject constraint to include an untested subset of

discourse: subject-verb complexes accompanying quoted material in newspaper articles.

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3. PE (MORE FOCUS) vs. EP (LESS FOCUS)

Huffman’s (2002) Degree of Focus System seeks to explain all cases in which a subject

and verb are located next to each other in a text or discourse (2012b): he has demonstrated this

through analysis of verb inversion in fictional texts (2002) and in inversion when accompanied

by quotes in fiction (2012a, fr. Diver 1995). This section replicates and expands the validity of

the Degree of Focus System by testing it in a subset of previously-untested discourse: the

occurrence of subject-verb complexes that accompany quoted material in nonfiction newspaper

accounts.

Tokens in this data set include 130 examples of the use of direct quotations, found in two

newspapers (The New York Times and Newsday). Articles were chosen at random and ‘blindly’:

all articles from a particular date were collected on and placed into a list by LexisNexis, and each

fifth article within the list was chosen for inclusion in the study. Each article had a different

author. Each token includes a subject (the utterer of the quote), a verb (the manner in which the

quote was uttered, most often said), and the quote itself, set off in quotation marks. Tokens could

also have additional information either before or after the subject (most often a descriptor phrase)

and/or information before or following the verb (the circumstances in which the quote was

uttered, most often set off by a prepositional phrase).

3.1 Data Discussion – general remarks:

Table 1 presents the total distribution of subject-verb (PE) and verb-subject (EP)

configurations in the data set:

Table 1: Total distribution of PE and EP configurations (N = 130):

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Word order Tokens PE (subject-verb) 88 (68%) EP (verb-subject) 42 (32%) Total 130 (100%)

According to Table 1, PE (68 percent) occurs more often than EP (32 percent) in the corpus. The

nature of journalistic writing can provide an explanation for the skewing towards PE: newspaper

articles are meant to be concise and provide important information to their readers. Information

that is newsworthy, then, is likely to be presented to the reader with PE/MORE FOCUS. So why is

some information, then, signaled with EP/LESS FOCUS?

3.2 First quotes and EP/LESS FOCUS:

The data demonstrates a strong tendency toward the use of EP word order when an

individual is first quoted who had not been previously mentioned in the article. This tendency

confirms Huffman’s (2002) observation that individuals who are first presented onto a scene tend

to be presented with EP word order: this also supports Chafe’s (1994) light subject constraint,

where new-but-not-trivial information is presented to the hearer in a way that makes the reader

aware of it, but does not require him/her to pay too much attention to it at its moment of

utterance. Table 2 shows the distribution of these ‘first quotes’ (accounting for 94 out of 130

total tokens):

Table 2: Distribution of PE/EP word order and previous mention of subject in discourse (N=94): Subject previously

mentioned Subject not previously mentioned

PE (subject-verb) 45 (90%) 11 (25%) EP (verb-subject) 5 (10%) 33 (75%) Total 50 (100%) 44 (100%)

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As seen in Table 2, out of the 94 examples of ‘first quotes’ in the data set, 50 are instances where

the quoted individual had been mentioned in the article prior to the quotation, while 44 tokens

represent instances where the individual had not. Table 2 shows that there is a strong preference

for previously-mentioned individuals to be associated with subject-verb word order: 90 percent

of all instances show PE word order. Conversely, when an individual had not been previously

mentioned in the article prior to his/her being quoted, 75 percent demonstrate EP word order.

The use of EP word order to introduce an individual not previously mentioned

within an article is exemplified below, in an excerpt from an article detailing a series of

acquisitions made by M&T Bank in 2012. Todd Hagerman, a financial analyst, is quoted:

(10) Analysts say M&T Bank has managed to successfully integrate recent big acquisitions.

“This acquisition is pretty consistent with M&T’s strategy of buying troubled institutions and turning them round,” said Todd Hagerman, an analyst with Stern Agee. (NYT828-03)

The second paragraph in (10) contains the first mention of Todd Hagerman: he had not

previously been mentioned in the article. His quote is accompanied by the EP complex

said Todd Hagerman. This word-order signal conveys the meaning LESS FOCUS, giving

the information within the complex a low degree of attention-worthiness. At this point in

the article, Hagerman is merely presented onto the scene: EP/LESS FOCUS is used to show

that, at this point within the discourse, he is not yet attention-worthy to the hearer. Under

Chafe’s light subject constraint, information that had previously been inactive to the

reader (the existence of Todd Hagerman) has now become activated. Hagerman’s status

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as an analyst for Stern Agee demonstrates to the hearer that, as an analyst by trade, he is

an authority on these types of acquisitions: therefore, he is non-trivial information to the

hearer. However, at this point of first mention, the reader does not know if he will play

any subsequent role in the article. Putting the information Todd Hagerman in an EP

construction marks him as accessible information that the hearer can keep in mind, but

not pay particular attention to at this point in the article.

3.3 Subsequent quotes and PE/MORE FOCUS:

If, however, the author does choose to quote an individual more than once, the

data demonstrates that PE/MORE FOCUS is highly likely to occur when that individual is

subsequently quoted. Table 3 shows the distribution of PE and EP word order in

examples of subsequent quotes (instances representing at least a second time in which a

particular individual is quoted):

Table 3: Distribution of PE/EP word order and quotation frequency (N=130):

Subsequently quoted First quoted PE (subject-verb) 32 (89%) 56 (60%) EP (verb-subject) 4 (11%) 38 (40%) Total 36 (100%) 94 (100%) As the data in Table 3 shows, out of 94 examples of first utterances, 60 percent

show PE word order, while 40 percent show EP word order. For subsequent utterances,

however, a much larger amount (89 percent) show PE word order, while only 11 percent

show EP word order. This data confirms that when an individual is quoted more than

once within an article, that person is highly likely to be signaled with MORE FOCUS for his

subsequent quotes, directing the hearer to pay more attention to the person. This

distributional fact also correlates with Chafe’s light subject constraint. When information

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is mentioned more frequently, it is highly likely to be of importance to the discourse; this

information now becomes given (or accessible), and is therefore likely to occupy the

subject position of a sentence.

To illustrate this, when Todd Hagerman is next quoted (from the same article as

(10)), he is (as predicted by the analysis and confirmed by the counts) signaled with PE:

(11) M&T Bank has not given out its own estimate of Basel III capital. M&T Bank's

chief financial officer, Rene F. Jones, said on Monday that it was still trying to calculate the ratio, saying the bank had "lots of M.B.A.'s trying to figure out how the rule works."

But Mr. Hagerman, the analyst, said "It's frustrating; I am assuming they know what the number is, and it's like M&T to provide limited information and limited transparency." (NYT828-03)

The author of this article quotes Hagerman more than once, highlighting the importance of his

contribution to the article. In his second mention, he is presented with the PE word order Mr.

Hagerman, the analyst, said. MORE FOCUS is signaled, directing the reader to pay more attention

to him. Since he has, at this point, been mentioned more than once in the article, he is now (at

least) accessible information, as the hearer now knows that Hagerman is important to the

discourse. Thus, the use of PE marks Hagerman as given information, to now be paid attention to.

3.4 PE/MORE FOCUS and the use of pronouns:

Another parameter through which Huffman analyzes the relationship between

subject-verb order and Degree of Focus is the appearance of pronouns in subject-verb and

verb-subject complexes: pronouns heavily favor appearing in subject-verb complexes that

signal MORE FOCUS (2012a). Considering Chafe’s light subject constraint, and his

observation that new information is likely to be introduced by a full noun phrase (Chafe

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1994: 75), it should be expected that pronouns, when used to identify an utterer of a quote,

should heavily favor PE/MORE FOCUS. By having been given in the preceding discourse,

the referent of the pronoun represents given/accessible information to the hearer, and is

highly likely to be someone the hearer should be paying attention to. Table 4 shows the

distribution of pronouns among subject-verb and verb-subject complexes within the

corpus:

Table 4: Distribution of PE/EP word order and occurrence of pronoun (N=130):

Pronoun No Pronoun PE (subject-verb) 31 (100%) 57 (58%) EP (verb-subject) 0 (0%) 42 (42%) Total 31 (100%) 99 (100%) As Table 4 shows, 31 out of the 130 collected tokens contain a pronoun, while 99

do not. While PE and EP signals are both well-represented when there is no pronoun, in

no case among the 31 examples of complexes with pronouns does EP word order surface.

This distributional fact supports the hypothesis that pronouns represent information that

has been previously referred to, that is of importance to the discourse, and on which the

hearer should have their attention directed.

3.5 Verb choice and PE word order:

As Huffman (2002, 2012a) noted, a particular Degree of Focus meaning can also

affect the hearer’s attention-worthiness toward a verb within a subject-verb complex:

verbs that specify how an individual speaks (such as shout and whisper) are more likely

to be found in PE complexes than the more general said, since the choice of a more

specific verb of saying highlights the importance of how the quoted individual is

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presenting information (2012a). Chafe also counts said among a class of "low-content

verb[s]" that are "subservient to the idea expressed by the object" (1994: 111). It should

be expected, as Huffman found in his analysis and in the corpus discussed in this analysis,

that PE/MORE FOCUS is more likely to be found when the verb expresses a particular way

of communicating the quote2. EP/LESS FOCUS, on the other hand, is more likely to be

found when the event is said.

Table 5 displays the distribution of PE and EP word order with respect to the verb

found in the complex:

Table 5: Word order and verb choice (N=130): other than said Said PE (subject-verb) 13 (87%) 76 (66%) EP (verb-subject) 2 (13%) 39 (34%) Total 115 (100%) 15 (100%) Table 5 shows that, out of the 115 examples of subject-verb complexes using said,

66 percent demonstrate PE word order, while 34 percent show EP word order. However,

when the verb is something other than said, 13 out of 15 total tokens (87 percent) show

PE word order, while only 2 (13 percent) show EP word order, This confirms the

hypothesis that higher-content verbs are more likely to be in PE complexes than their

low-content counterparts, and more likely to signal MORE FOCUS to bring attention to how

the quote was spoken.

Huffman’s Degree of Focus System, then, can be used to account for occurrences

of quotation inversion and non-inversion in nonfiction newspaper articles. Quoted

individuals who have not been mentioned previously are more likely to be brought onto

2 Verbs other than said found in the corpus include added (found three times), adds (once), conceded (once), noted (once), recalled (five times), writes (once), and wrote (three times).

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the scene with EP word order (signaling LESS FOCUS) as a way of introducing them to the

reader: if they are quoted again, they are likely to be signaled with PE/MORE FOCUS. This

also follows from Chafe’s (1994) discussion of the light subject constraint: first mentions

represent new-but-non-trivial information that readers can pay less attention to (and is

thus more likely to be presented in verb-subject order), while subsequent mentions

represent given or accessible information that is highly likely to be important to the

discourse (and more likely to be presented in subject-verb order). In addition, there is a

high correlation between the use of pronouns in subject-verb complexes and the

occurrence of PE word order, and the use of verbs other than said and PE word order.

However, one additional characteristic of quotation inversion must be considered: the

position of the subject-verb complex vis-à-vis the quote itself.

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4. Motivations behind placement of subject-verb and verb-subject word order in quotation inversion: before, after, or within quotes

Part 3 showed, using both qualitiative and quantitative-predictive data, that Huffman’s

(2002) Degree of Focus System and Chafe’s (1994) light subject constraint can be expanded to

account for examples of quotation inversion in newspaper articles. However, Birner’s (1996)

objection to considering quotation inversion in her analysis identifies an additional parameter for

study: the placement of the subject-verb complex (regardless of its ordering) in relation to the

quote. As Birner noted, subject-verb complexes can appear in front of the quote, as in (12):

(12) Scott Jordan Harris, a film critic who is himself disabled, wrote: “Suddenly, we see

those athletes as they are: not something less than normal athletes, but something more.” (NYT828-34)

The complex can also come after the entire quote, as in (13):

(13) “We’re always up for storm chic,” said David Verdi, an NBC News vice president…

(NYT828-21) In addition, the complex can occur within the quote, splitting it into two parts (as in (14)):

(14) “It works in the engines that we have, it works in the aircraft that we have, it works in the

ships that we have,” said Ray Mabus, secretary of the Navy. “It is seamless.” (NYT828-04)

The complex can (and does) appear before, after, and within quoted material among the 130

tokens within the corpus:

Table 6: PE/EP word order and placement relative to quote (N=130):

Complex before quote

Complex within quote (split)

Complex after quote

Total

PE 14 (11%) 47 (36%) 27 (21%) 88 (68%) EP 0 (0%) 23 (17%) 19 (15%) 42 (32%)

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As Table 6 shows, five out of six possible configurations (PE-quote, quote-PE-quote, quote-PE,

quote-EP-quote, and quote-EP) are represented in the corpus, with one configuration (EP-quote)

unattested.

Although Huffman (2002) argues that the Degree of Focus System primarily affects the

reader’s perception of attention-worthiness to the subject and the verb in the complex, he notes

that “the choice between PE and EP also reflects the importance of what is said, or the overall

focus structure of the passage” (2012a). Citing Diver (1984), he notes that the use of PE and EP

can “differentiate more important remarks from less important ones” (2012a):

(15) His mother said, ‘I don’t like you going back to a place like that, Junior.’

‘It’s healthy enough, Mom,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sick a day. ‘I’d be more scared of getting sick in Paraguay than I would back in Arabia. Marshes and flies and fevers, and all that.’ ‘I know it,’ said his father. ‘A dry place is better, honey.’

(Huffman 2012b, fr. Diver 1984) The father’s quote in (15) is merely affirming what the son had said, and does not seem to be

adding any new information to the context of the story. As Huffman argues, the entire quote

accompanying said his father in (15) would thus be distinguished as a 'less important' remark

because of said his father’s verb-subject word order. However, one must consider why, in (15),

the verb-subject complex was placed within the quote. Under a framework in which a particular

word order can assign MORE or LESS FOCUS to an entire quoted passage, the same effect could

have been achieved by placing said his father after the entire quote (following the word honey),

or even before the entire quote (Said his father, “I know it….”). Placing the verb-subject complex

within the quote is thus a deliberate choice on the part of the writer.

What, then, can potentially motivate the placement of a subject-verb complex before,

after, or within a quote? The present analysis argues that the placement of the subject-verb

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complex relative to the quote helps the hearer to assess the information presented in the quote in

particular ways. Quoted information occurring before the subject-verb complex, regardless of the

complex’s order, provides justification for a claim made by the author in the previous discourse.

When quoted information comes after the complex, on the other hand, it is affected by the level

of attention-worthiness signaled by the complex preceding it. When the subject-verb complex

signals MORE FOCUS, the following quoted information will also be highly likely to berelatively

more attention-worthy to the reader. When the verb-subject complex signals LESS FOCUS, any

following quoted information will be highly likely to be less attention-worthy to the reader. Thus,

the meanings of the Degree of Focus complex may attribute greater or lesser importance to the

quote that follows it.

4.1 Quoted material before subject-verb complexes

Quoted material in newspaper articles that is found before the subject-verb complex

occupies a cognitively-privileged “first position which serves to establish a matrix. It gives the

hearer a framework, an idea of the overall nature of what he is about to hear or read before he is

given specific information to fit into the framework” (Huffman 2002: 318). Often, this position

“offers an opportunity for coherency and smooth transitions, by providing a reference to a

previously-mentioned item” (Huffman 2002: 320). In this regard, quoted material occurring

before the subject-verb complex serves a particular linking function: it provides evidence for a

claim that was made by the author of the article prior to the quotation.

Importantly, quoted material in this position does not seem to be affected by the Focus

value of the subject-verb (or verb-subject) complex following it. For example, in one article

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detailing the complexities of covering the 2012 Republican National Convention in the midst of

a severe storm, a senior executive producer for ABC News, Marc Burstein, is quoted:

(16) One major wrinkle could come if the storm worsens so much that it forces Republicans to cancel more proceedings, pushing the convention into Friday. That is a prospect few seemed to ever contemplate before Monday. Most news organizations plan to pack up and move their equipment to Charlotte, N.C., for the Democratic National Convention next week.

''After 12:01 on Friday morning, this all gets torn down,'' Mr. Burstein said, gesturing to ABC's makeshift work space constructed in a luxury box at the arena. (NYT828-21)

In (16), the paragraph before Burstein’s quote discusses how, if the convention were to be

pushed back to a later date, news organizations covering the event would most likely pack up

and instead prepare to cover the Democratic National Convention the following week. Burstein’s

quote (after 12:01 on Friday morning, this all gets torn down) supports the author’s claim, made

in the previous paragraph, that news organizations will not stay for the convention if severe

weather continues to postpone it: his quote even duplicates certain words (Friday) and ideas

(torn down, referencing pack up) found in the previous paragraph, strengthening the link

between the first part of his quote and the paragraph.

In another article, about the sons of 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney,

the second paragraph contains a quote by Romney’s eldest son, Tagg:

(17) When Tagg Romney, the eldest of Mitt and Ann Romney's five sons, was not

quite 12, he decided, in a fit of adolescent rebellion, that his father was a nerd. “Everything he did bugged me,'' the younger Mr. Romney recalled. ''I think it broke his heart because he had been my hero, and all of a sudden, I didn't want anything to do with him.” (NYT828-13)

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When Tagg is identified as the utterer of the quote in (17) (his first in the article), he is

signaled with subject-verb MORE FOCUS (the younger Mr. Romney recalled), which is

expected for an important person within the article (especially when mentioned before his

quote). Above the quote, in the first paragraph, the author claims that when Tagg was

young, he chose to rebel against his father. The first part of his quote (everything he did

bugged me) directly comments on this claim, and provides justification for the author

making that statement by providing a reason for rebelling: in particular, the use of the

word bugged (a word often used by young children) to describe his state of mind

provides a direct point of linkage between this part of the quote and a previously-

mentioned fact mentioned before it, his age (“not quite 12”).

Thus, it seems that quoted material coming before a subject-verb (or verb-subject)

complex serves to validate a previous claim made by the article’s author. However, the

assignment of Focus, as determined by the order of the subject and verb following the

quoted material in (16) and (17), seems to not affect how the reader should interpret the

quoted material before the subject-verb complex. Rather, the information in the quoted

material serves simply as a justification of what the author previously claimed. The

present part of this analysis attempted to demonstrate this using qualitative data, but

quantitative data analysis must also be done to confirm this: a count showing that content

words occurring in the part of the quote before the subject-verb complex are more likely

to be in preceding paragraphs than after can demonstrate quantitatively that quotes in this

position are more likely to simply justify an author’s claim. This particular count

represents an avenue for future analysis.

5.2 Quoted material after subject-verb complexes

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However, what should be done with the part of the quote occurring after the

subject-verb complex (I think it broke his heart…) in (17)? The subject-verb complex the

younger Mr. Romney recalled that accompanies (17) signals MORE FOCUS, prompting the

reader to pay more attention to Tagg. The second part of the quote provides additional

context in which Tagg rebelled against his father. As Tagg claims, his father reacted

unfavorably to his sudden rebellion in a specific way (I think it broke his heart). His

father’s negative reaction had not been previously alluded to in the article: by including it,

the author wants the reader to more fully understand the relationship between Tagg and

his father. The use of subject-verb word order in identifying Tagg as the utterer of the

quote puts Tagg in a position of MORE FOCUS, and also seems to highlight the importance

of this latter part of Tagg’s quote, urging the reader to pay attention to it.

When Tagg is next quoted (in discussing how his father attempted to keep his

work life, and the stresses associated with it, separate from his home life), a verb-subject

complex breaks up his quote:

(18) Although he was working long hours at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he

founded, Mr. Romney tried to keep his work separate from his home life. “When he walked in the door, he was excited to see everybody,” recalled Tagg Romney. “You didn’t know if he had a good day or a bad day at the office.” (NYT828-13)

The idea of keeping work separate from home life suggests to the reader that Tagg’s

father tried not to show how stressed he was at work to his family. The first part of Tagg’s

quote directly references this: no matter what happened at work, he always put on a

happy face to see his family. But the use of LESS FOCUS in (18) (especially with a verb

other than said) seems unexpected, since Tagg had already been established as a main

subject of the article (and should be expected to be signaled with MORE FOCUS). However,

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the idea of not knowing if his father had a good or bad day at his office (as stated in the

latter part of Tagg’s quote) is entailed by the fact that he always made sure to act excited

to see his family after work (as stated in the first part of Tagg’s quote). The use of LESS

FOCUS in identifying Tagg, then, seems to mark his subsequent quote as something not

particularly attention-worthy to the discourse, which the reader should not pay as much

attention to.

This strategy of deflecting the reader’s attention from a certain part of the quote

can be seen in another example. Here, tennis player Kim Clijsters is quoted after playing

in the first rounds of the 2012 U.S. Open:

(19) Clijsters, who missed last year’s Open with an abdominal injury, extended her winning streak in the tournament to 22 matches.

“It was very disappointing for me last year to not defend my title,” said Clijsters, who had won the Open the previous year, and also in 2005. “It’s an honor to be playing in front of the crowd this year.” (NYT828-23)

Example (19) appears towards the end of the article, where Clijsters had not only been

mentioned numerous times (and was thus active information to the reader) but was

previously quoted in the article with Clijsters said; thus, the complex said Clijsters is

unexpected at this point in the article. The article previously established that Clijsters was

a three-time U.S. Open Champion: the paragraph before the quote in (19) mentions that

she did not play in the previous Open due to injury. The first part of her quote, it was very

disappointing for me last year to not defend my title, alludes to her missing the Open due

to circumstances beyond her control. After said Clijsters (a verb-subject ordering

signaling LESS FOCUS), the rest of her quote appears: it’s an honor to be playing in front of

the crowd this year. This statement may be true, but also seems clichéd: it is not hard to

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imagine someone uttering this phrase in a context in which he or she is heavily favored to

win something, but wants to look humble. By using verb-subject order to signal LESS

FOCUS, the author seems to be de-focusing the attention on this statement as well,

acknowledging that it may not be of that much importance to the reader or to the article.

When a subject-verb complex (signaling MORE FOCUS) appears before an entire

quote, it also directs the reader to pay more attention to the quote:

(20) LONDON – The 14th Summer Paralympic Games open in London on Wednesday, and spectators and an anticipated four billion viewers worldwide are being told to forget about the athletes’ disability and focus on the sport.

Sir Philip Craven, the British president of the International Paralympic Committee and a former wheelchair basketball champion, said: “This is sport. It’s not disability anything.” (NYT828-34)

In (20), an article about the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games, Sir Philip Craven had not

been mentioned previously in the discourse (and thus represents new information to the

reader), yet he is unexpectedly identified with subject-verb order, signaling MORE FOCUS.

His status as someone of importance to the discourse is established in his description

following the complex. However, he is also uttering a powerful quote: he is demanding

that participants in the Paralympic Games be seen as athletes on the same level as those

in the Olympics. This powerful message is very attention-worthy and deserves the full

attention of the reader: the use of subject-verb order to signal MORE FOCUS highlights the

importance of this statement to the reader.

It must be stressed the placement of quoted information after the subject-verb

complex is a function of the attention-worthiness of the information, not necessarily a

function of whether the information is given or new to the hearer. Information does not

32

have to be new to be attention-worthy. In (20), the paragraph preceding Craven’s quote

paraphrases his quote before presenting it: however, the sheer power of the quote

demands the reader’s attention, and the author chooses to use the subject-verb

construction Sir Philip Craven…said, and place it before the quote, to direct the reader’s

attention to it. (21) also demonstrates this:

(21) Mondays, following the custom of the Mormon faith, were ‘family nights,’ a time for games and stories, usually wrapped around a moral lesson. “Sometimes it was how to deal with bullies if you’re getting bullied at school,” Tagg Romney said. “Sometimes it was a story about Daniel in the lion’s den. When we were little they would have us act it out.” (NYT828-13)

In (21), Tagg’s quote provides an almost-minimal pair: two sentences, each beginning

with sometimes, describe a type of story told in the Romney household. But, the subject-

verb complex Tagg Romney said (a signal of MORE FOCUS) falls in-between these two

statements. Why might the complex be located here? The first sentence describes a more

generic type of story that may be told in any household: this fact seems to be enough to

justify the author’s statement above Tagg’s quote. The second sentence, however,

describes a more specific type of story: one that would have been told in the family with

strong religious values (indeed, Mitt Romney’s status as a “faithful Mormon” had been

previously invoked by the article). By putting this information after the MORE FOCUS

signal, the author is keeping the hearer’s attention on a specific point: remember the

importance of Mormonism on the life of the Romney family. Thus, the placement of the

complex Tagg Romney said before this point keeps the importance of Mormonism in the

life of the Romneys in a frame of attention-worthiness to the reader.

33

As similarly mentioned at the end of 5.2, the qualitative data presented above

must be supplemented with quantitative data that shows quoted material coming after

verb-subject constructions is less attention-worthy than quoted material coming after

subject-verb constructions. A count can demonstrate, for example, that portions of quotes

following verb-subject complexes (signaling LESS FOCUS) are more likely to have clichéd

statements, thus justifying the use of LESS FOCUS to take the reader’s attention away from

the latter part of the quote. Again, this represents an avenue for future analysis.

5.3 The non-occurrence of EP-quote forms:

As seen in Table 6, five out of six possible combinations of subject-verb order and

its placement vis-à-vis the quote are attested in the corpus. The only permutation that is

not attested in the corpus is EP-quote, where a verb-subject precedes an entire quote

(such as (4) in Part 1). Under the analysis presented here, its non-occurrence within the

data set can be explained. A verb-subject complex is a signal for LESS FOCUS, directing

the reader to pay relatively little attention to the information within that complex. If the

signal LESS FOCUS also affects the reader’s perception of quoted information coming after

the verb-subject complex, then the quote following the complex would also perceived by

the reader as not being particularly attention-worthy. In a newspaper article, where lots of

newsworthy information must be presented to the reader as concisely as possible, it

would thus be inefficient for the reader to present the quote and the person uttering the

quote as less attention-worthy.

However, EP-quote constructions can be found in a non-fiction context:

(22) This intolerance takes many forms, sometimes crudely so. In early 1991, for

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instance, police busted into a Boston home where members of the local leather community regularly met for private parties. No warrant was presented: words like “faggots” and “fucking AIDS carriers” were used by officers the night they brutally searched the house and the thirty men inside. Three organizers were arrested, and the names and addresses of others entered into public records. One man was so traumatized by the raid that he killed himself soon thereafter by jumping off a freeway ramp. Still, few in the Boston gay community expressed outrage over the trespass. “What a colossally stupid waste of time,” stated the editor of a local gay newspaper. “Let’s hope our organizers spend as little time as possible on it. Said another community leader, “[the raid] doesn’t seem like a gay and lesbian issue.” (Thompson 1991: xii)

This excerpt discusses a raid on a gay male leather community in Boston in 1991. At the

time, such groups were marginalized even within the gay community, and were even

sometimes seen as ‘holding back’ the gay rights movement of the early 1990s (especially

with regards to what were seen as unsafe sexual practices). Towards the end of this

excerpt, Thompson notes that few in the Boston gay community expressed outrage over

the trespass, and follows this statement with quotes from two community leaders. The

first quote provides support for what Thompson claimed immediately beforehand, as

expected when it precedes a subject-verb complex. The second quote, however, is

prefaced by a verb-subject complex signaling LESS FOCUS. The quote that follows only

reiterates the same fact present in the first quote: the apathy of the larger Boston gay

community to the act of violence. The author may have wanted to include this quote to

show the vehemence against the leather community by the larger Boston-area gay and

lesbian community, but by putting a subject-verb complex entirely before a quote, the

author seems to tell the reader that there is nothing here that is particularly attention-

worthy

It seems, then, that the use of subject-verb inversion in quotation inversion

constructions is motivated, in part, by the level of attention-worthiness the author wishes

35

to place on the speaker, or the manner in which the speaker uttered the quote. However,

the attention-worthiness signaled by this order can also extend to the portion of the quote

uttered after the placement of the subject-verb complex, and (in part) motivates the

choice of where the subject-verb complex is located relative to the quote: whether before,

after, or within. Such tools, then, are available to speakers to control the amount of Focus

they wish to give to a particular piece of information at any particular time.

36

5. Conclusion

This paper has argued that Huffman’s (2002) Degree of Focus System can be expanded in

coverage and solidified in its claims. First, the present paper used a corpus of newspaper articles

to discuss a form of inversion not previously considered in most analyses: quotation inversion.

Syntactic treatments of quotation inversion define the possible positions of where subjects, verbs,

and quoted material can go, but they are unconcerned with why speakers may choose to use one

order over another in a particular discursive situation. Pragmatic treatments attempt this, but

most exclude quotation inversion in their analysis, ignoring a robust subset of inversion types

that are employed by language users on a daily basis. By analyzing a corpus of tokens found in

English-language newspaper articles, this study replicates and extends Huffman’s Degree of

Focus System, firming up the validity of his hypothesis.

Second, this study has shown that the order of subject and verb within the subject-verb

complex may not only affect the degree of attention-worthiness placed on the subject and verb

within the complex, but to the quoted information that comes after the complex. Huffman’s

Degree of Focus System primarily applies to the level of attention-worthiness that the speaker

wishes to place on the subject and the verb, but Part 4 of the present paper demonstrated that

speakers may also use subject-verb inversion to vary the level of prominence they wish to place

on information that follows. Again, more quantitative evidence would be needed to solidify this

claim.

Ultimately, then, the level of focus a speaker wishes to place on a particular piece of

information can be manipulated in numerous ways. Subject-verb inversion is just one of a variety

of tools that can be used by the speaker to communicate, as best he can, to the hearer. This

communication will never be one-to-one: rather, the speaker and hearer must invest quite a bit to

37

achieve successful communication. The speaker must use all that he can to put the components

of a message ‘out there’: the hearer, as best he can, must use his own tools to piece together what

he can, with the hopes of understanding what the speaker is saying. Subject-verb inversion,

within the Columbia School Grammar framework, is just one of many ways to do this.

38

Sources of Tokens: NYT828-03: Eaves, P. (2012, Aug. 28) News Analysis: Deal Helps a Bank Catch Up in Capital. New York Times, section B, p. 1. NYT828-04: Cardwell, D. (2012, Aug. 28) Running on Algae, Drawing Anger. New York Times, section B, p. 1. NYT828-08: Lattman, P. (2012, Aug. 28) Willard Butcher, 85; Led Chase Manhattan. New York Times, section A, p. 16. NYT828-09: Hardy, Q. (2012, Aug. 28) Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing. New York Times, section A, p. 1. NYT828-12: Zinser, L. (2012, Aug. 28) Comfortable as Open Champion, Stosur Beats Rain and Her First Foe. New York Times, section B, p. 11. NYT828-13: Stolberg, S. and Parker, A. (2012, Aug. 28) With Five Romney Sons, Five More Spokesmen. New York Times, section A, p. 10. NYT828-14: Powell, M. (2012, Aug. 28) In a Post-9/11 City, a Person’s Language Can Be a Cause for Police Suspicion. New York Times, section A, p. 17. NYT828-15: Nir, S. (2012, Aug. 28) State Senator From Queens is Indicted. New York Times, section A, p. 17. NYT828-18: Rudoren, J. and Kershner, I. (2012, Aug. 28) Israeli School Confront Hate After Youths’ Attack. New York Times, section A, p. 3. NYT828-19: Bumiller, E. (2012, Aug. 28) U.S. Military Disciplines 9 Over Video and Koran Burning. New York Times, section A, p. 4. NYT828-21: Peters, J. News Outlets Stay Alert But in Place. New York Times, section A, p. 10. NYT828-23: Taylor, N. (2012, Aug. 28) Federer Wins Easily; After a Sluggish Start, So Does Clijsters. New York Times, section B, p. 12. NYT828-24: Bakalar, N. (2012, Aug. 28) Vital Signs: Prevention: Factor in Breast Milk May Cut H.I.V. Spread. New York Times, section D, p. 6. NYT828-25: O’Connor, A. (2012, Aug. 28) Really? The Claim: During A Heart Attack, Dial 911 And Chew An Aspirin. New York Times, section D, p. 5. NYT828-27: Vecsey, G. (2012, Aug. 28) Tennis History (and Garish Pants) Return With Collins. New York Times, section B, p. 10.

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NYT828-28: Yandell, K. (2012, Aug. 28) More Than One Kind of Partner for a Supernova. New York Times, section D, p. 3. NYT828-29: The Associated Press (2012, Aug. 28) Caution Among Buyers of Luxury Constrains Tiffany’s Results. New York Times, Business/Financial Desk. NYT828-30: Parker-Pope, T. (2012, Aug. 28) Overtreatment Is Taking a Harmful Toll. New York Times, section D, p. 1. NYT828-31: Southall, A. (2012, Aug. 28) Election 2012 | Debt Clock: A Reminder That Time Is Money. New York Times, section A, p. 13. NYT828-34: Morris, H. (2012, Aug. 28) Welcome to the ‘Superhuman’ Games. The New York Times Blogs: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/welcome-to-the-superhuman-games/ (accessed April 27, 2013) NDay828-04: Young, A. (2012, Aug. 28) KIDSDAY: On Spider-Man’s Team. Newsday, p. B21. NDay828-08: Castillo, A. (2012, Aug. 28) MTA Files $65M in Irene Claims. Newsday, p. A07. NDay828-09: Spangler, N. (2012, Aug. 28) Volleys & VEGGIES: At Open, Some of the Best Serves Come From LI Farms. Newsday, p. A10. NDay828-10: Napolitano, J. (2012, Aug. 28) Under New Ownership: William Floyd District Opens Tech Program: Ends Relationship with BOCES in Cost-Cut Move. Newsday, p. A14. NDay828-12: Whittle, P. (2012, Aug. 28) HEMPSTEAD TOWN: Court Date for Water District. Newsday, p. A23. NDay828-13: Fuller, N. (2012, Aug. 28) Town of Islip: Board Eyes Propane Safety. Newsday, p. A28. NDay828-14: Mason-Draffen, C. (2012, Aug. 28) HELP WANTED: You Can Skip Lunch, But Not The Break. Newsday, p. A36. NDay828-17: Herrmann, M. (2012, Aug. 28) Reversing on Course: PGA Talking about Bringing More Big Events to Bethpage; Crusty Greens Saturday Fixed for Final Round on Sunday. Newsday, p. A53. NDay828-18: Martin, K. (2012, Aug. 28) ‘Swiss Army Knife’ Baker Gets Cut; Injured Tight End/FB Waived with Five Others; He’ll Be Put on Jet’s’ IR If No Other Team Claims Him. Newsday, p. A56. NDay828-19: Jeansonne, J. (2012, Aug. 28) Now, Gold Standard: Expectations High for Murray, Who Wins His Opener. Newsday, p. A60

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NDay828-20: Mason, B. (2012, Aug. 28) LYNBROOK: Tributes for longtime school district chief. Newsday, p. A23, NDay828-21: Lennon, D. (2012, Aug. 28) Losses make interesting fail. Newsday, p. A63.

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