Inversion (linguistics) - Inversion in Other Languages

Inversion in Other Languages

Certain other languages, in particular other Germanic languages and Romance languages, use inversion in broadly similar ways to English, such as in question formation. The restriction of inversion to auxiliary verbs does not generally apply in these languages; subjects can be inverted with any type of verb, although particular languages have their own rules and restrictions.

For example, in French, tu aimes le chocolat is a declarative sentence meaning "you like chocolate". When the order of the subject tu ("you") and the verb aimes ("like") is switched, a question is produced: aimes-tu le chocolat? ("do you like chocolate?"). In German, similarly, du magst means "you like", whereas magst du can mean "do you like?".

In languages with V2 word order, such as German, inversion can occur as a consequence of the requirement that the verb appear as the second constituent in a declarative sentence. Thus if another element (such as an adverbial phrase or clause) introduces the sentence, the verb must come next, followed by the subject. An example is: Ein Jahr nach dem Autounfall sieht er wirklich gut aus, literally "A year after the car accident, looks he really good". The same occurs in some other West Germanic languages, like Dutch, where the previous sentence would be Een jaar na het auto-ongeval ziet hij er werkelijk goed uit. (In such languages, inversion can function as a test for syntactic constituency, since precisely one constituent may surface preverbally.)

In languages with free word order, inversion of subject and verb or of other elements of a clause can occur more freely, often for pragmatic reasons rather than as part of a specific grammatical construction.