Apart from
extraposition, or deferring the subject to the tail end of a clause or sentence, there’s still another sentence pattern that purposively disrupts the usual declarative form to achieve emphasis and better sentence transitions. That pattern is called
inversion. It puts a prepositional phrase, adverbial phrase, adjectival phrase, or participial phrase at the beginning of the sentence—ahead of its subject—then puts an intransitive verb after it, as in this construction: “In no other way could the Filipino’s voting behavior be understood.”
Inversion differs somewhat from extraposition, which deliberately postpones the subject until the end of the clause or sentence for emphasis: “In no other way could we understand the Filipino’s voting behavior.” Inversion is more specialized, often used as a continuity device to ensure a smooth, logical transition from one sentence to the next.
Consider this passage where the second and third sentences depart from the normal subject-verb-predicate construction:
“We are not lacking in political talents with the requisite education, expertise, and vision to propel our country to greatness. But so warped by the broadcast entertainment media is our mindset that we put a higher level of trust on popular entertainers than on legitimate, level-headed leaders. Looming larger in our minds is the instant gratification of our imaginary desires by celluloid or video heroes than real, long-term solutions to our national problems by truly competent aspirants to public office.”
We can see inversion at work when the second sentence leads off with the adjectival phrase “but so warped by the broadcast entertainment media is our mindset,” whose normal declarative form is “our mindset is so warped by the broadcast entertainment media.” The same is true in the third sentence, which leads off with the participial phrase “looming larger in our minds is the instant gratification of our imaginary desires” instead of the normal declarative, “the instant gratification of our imaginary desires by celluloid or video heroes looms larger in our minds.”
The effect of the twin inversions is a logical, clearer transition of ideas from one sentence to the next—better than if all three sentences were in this simple declarative form:
“We are not lacking in political talents with the requisite education, expertise, and vision to propel our country to greatness. Our mindset, however, is so warped by the broadcast entertainment media that we put a higher level of trust on popular entertainers than on legitimate, level-headed leaders. The instant gratification of our imaginary desires by celluloid or video heroes looms larger in our minds than real, long-term solutions to our problems by truly competent aspirants to public office.”
Note that in the inversion-free pattern, the transition between the first sentence and the non-inverted second sentence still works adequately, but that between the second and the third is fuzzy and weak. The link, so to speak, has been lost in transition. Inverted sentences usually do much better than simple declaratives in making such links.
But inversion, like the other sentence constructions that subvert the normal declarative form, has its limits. It works badly when used to make abrupt transitions to ideas not specifically taken up in preceding sentences. See how it falters in doing its job in this passage:
“You are talented and you work hard to finish a college education. In the art of management and governance you hone yourself assiduously. From out of nowhere comes a popular upstart, unschooled in both the academic disciplines and governance, telling you that he is much more fit for public office than you are.
So craggy are the inversions above that they simply don’t work. Only when the antecedent ideas are established clearly beforehand, in fact, does inversion function well:
“You are talented, work hard to finish a college education, and hone yourself assiduously in the art of management and governance. Then all of a sudden and from out of nowhere comes a popular upstart, unschooled in both the academic disciplines and governance, telling you that he is much more fit for public office than you are.”
There’s another clear and present danger when we construct inverted sentences: the higher probability of our verbs failing to agree in number with the subjects of our inverts. So always remember this rule: in inverted sentences, the number of the subject must follow that of the verb, not that of the noun or pronoun that intervenes or comes before it. Take, for instance, this somewhat poetic invert: “To the dark recesses of public office go the scoundrels for their last refuge.”
At first glance it would seem that the plural verb form “go” should be the singular “goes” instead so it can agree with the singular “public office.” A closer look, however, shows that the true subject of the invert is not “public office”—nor even “dark recesses”—but the plural “scoundrels.”
Indeed, using inversion for smooth transition demands eternal vigilance in maintaining subject-verb agreement in the inverted sentence.
This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in The Manila Times
, subsequently became Chapter 71 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge
, ©2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times
:Using inversion for smooth transitionsNext week:
Inverted sentences as transitional devices (February 13, 2025)
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