From the preface:
This study of subject-verb inversion is mainly corpus-based. The corpus comprises both fiction and non-fiction. It has not been "emptied", but we have treated all the patterns of inversion (and relevant patterns of straight order) we have found in it. Although we have made copious use of exemplification, the examples given are only a small fraction of the total number collected. We have made use of a corpus in preference to introspection because it gives a better guarantee of exhaustiveness: time and again the corpus has forced us to accommodate patterns in our system which introspection is not likely to have captured. This does not mean that we totally reject introspection, which we have used in cases where there were gaps in our corpus. Also, we have drawn on earlier treatments of inversion. Of these, special mention should be made of Bengt Jacobsson's impressive monograph. References to our primary corpus take the shape of capital letters followed by page number, e. g. CPSA 14 (a list of the abbreviations used is found on pp. 87-89). Bibliographical references and references to examples taken from the literature on inversion are given as the name of the author followed by page number, e. g. Jacobsson p. 5 (the bibliography is found on pp 90-92). Examples without any reference after them are constructed. We want to thank Bent Jacobsen of the Commercial High School, Aarhus; Erik Hansen and Erik Olsen of Odense University; special thanks are due to John Dienhart, also of Odense University, for his acute criticisms and comments. Thanks are also due to Caroline and Marion for helping us check the examples. Finally we wish to thank Odense University's Publication Fund, whose generous support has made publication in this form possible.
