The Study Of English Inversion In The Theoretical Framework Of Prototype-model Theory

English inversion, as a noncanonical sentence pattern, due to its unconventional sentence structure, has aroused many scholars'interest to study its constructions and forming features. Many scholars at home and abroad have studied English inversion in syntax, pragmatics or cognitive linguistics. Unlike former studies, this paper makes a tentative analysis of English inversion within the theoretical framework of prototype-model theory. This paper attempts to explore the reason why people choose inverted structure instead of its canonical counterpart, to explore the distribution of information focus in English inversion patterns and the generative mechanism of English inversion.Prototype-model theory is first introduced in Professor Zhang Jin's book Thought-Model Hypothesis. This theory emphasizes the relationship between language and reality, thought as well as spiritual world. It also emphasizes the patterning process from objective world and spiritual world to language. Thought incarnates the cognitive process that how people perceive the reality, while language serves as a tool to express the thought and to embody the cognitive process, and then to describe and reflect the objective world or spiritual world. In linguistics, objective world and spiritual world which are originally existing entities and realities, or the concepts formed in human beings'brains are prototypes; speech and language are models that imitate, describe and reflect the objective world and spiritual world.In this paper, three research questions are explored within the theoretical framework of prototype-model theory.First, why do people use English inversion instead of canonical sentences when the objects or ideas can be also expressed by basic sentence structures?It is analyzed in this paper that English inversion and its canonical sentence pattern are conjugational interpromotion owing to the properties of similarities and differences. They are models of one prototype and they can be used to depict the same scene. Zhang Jin mentions in his book that objective material world is the content of cognition while language is the form of cognition. The content of cognition is objective while the form of cognition is subjective. In what form the content will be construed is determined by the modeling agents. Different modeling agents may have different perspectives. To construe one scene (the prototype), the modeling agent can view it from different vantage points and choose different reference points and can be with different purposes, which can result in different linguistic expressions (the models), and which accounts for the phenomenon that people use a more complicated structure—English inversion instead of the basic sentence structure.Second, how is the information focus distributed in English inversion types? Information focus on syntactic level involves two subtypes, unmarked and marked information focuses. Unmarked information focus accords with sentence-final position. Marked information focus denotes the phenomenon that the constituents carrying new information are placed in other positions rather than in the end. By analyzing lots of FI sample sentences, it is found that FI types tend to highlight the information at sentence-final position, which is in line with unmarked information focus. On the contrary, in SAI types, sentence-initial constituents bear information focus, which accords with marked information focus. Third, how is English inversion generated? According to cognitive linguistic theories,perspective is one part of prominence. Prominence is a characteristic which things and events in the objective world present to attract people's attention. It influences the speaker's cognitive order, and also has an impact on the arrangement of the sentence structure order eventually. The more prominent is earlier to be perceived; the earlier to be perceived is earlier to be expressed. Prominence in modeling agent's cognition acts directly on patterning sequence and has a further effect on the arrangement of syntactic order, which can account for the generation of inversion types effectively. Within the theoretical framework of prototype-model theory, distinct cognitive prominences are demonstrated to be the generative mechanism of inversion subtypes. Cognitive prominence of emotion and state, ways and direction and location, time and action are illustrated respectively in FI subtypes. Cognitive prominence of degree, connection negation and restriction, condition, and frequency in SAI subtypes. They all compose the generative mechanisms of English inversion subtypes.