demos

DISCO-INVERT

Comparing Ditransitive Structures, Indirect-object Shift, and Negative Subject-Auxiliary Inversion in English Corpora

Project Overview

DISCO-INVERT is a corpus-based linguistic project analyzing two key syntactic phenomena in English:

• Ditransitive and Indirect-object shift constructions
• Negative and restrictive subject-auxiliary inversion

The project investigates syntactic patterns, their frequency, and contextual usage within spoken and written corpora of contemporary and historical American English.

Syntactic Structures Analyzed

1. Ditransitive vs. Indirect-object Shift

• Ditransitive (double object)

  The waiter gave [Mary]_INDIRECT OBJECT [a drink]_DIRECT OBJECT.
  

• Indirect-object shift (dative movement)

  The waiter gave [a drink]_DIRECT OBJECT [to Mary]_INDIRECT OBJECT.
  

Corpus used: Fisher Corpus (telephone conversations)

2. Negative and Restrictive Subject-Auxiliary Inversion

Inversion triggered by fronted negative or restrictive elements, changing the canonical order from Subject–Auxiliary to Auxiliary–Subject.

Included Structures:

• Negative/restrictive adverbials:

  Seldom had she visited.
  Nowhere does he mention this.
  At no time must the door be left unlocked.
  

• Negative/restrictive objects:

  Not a single book had he read.
  Only two of them did he find useful.
  

Explicitly Excluded:

• Inversion with nor, neither, not only:

  Nor do I. Neither do they.
  Not only does he travel...
  

Corpora used: Fisher Corpus, COCA, COHA

Contextual Overview (Other Inversion Types)

For comparative reference, the analysis briefly addresses related syntactic inversion phenomena:

• Interrogatives: Did she go?, Where did she go?

• Conditional inversions: Had I known..., Should you change your plans...

• Exclamatives: Boy did she go!, What a fool have I been!

• Comparative constructions: She enjoys music, as do I.

• Elliptical clauses: So does he., Neither do they.

• Degree expressions (so/such): So little time did we have...

Objectives

• Identify and classify syntactic patterns systematically.
• Analyze syntactic variation across spoken and written English.
• Contribute empirical insights to syntactic theory.

Corpora

• Fisher Corpus (spoken English)
• Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
• Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)

Audience

Researchers in linguistics, corpus linguistics, and syntax.