Inversion in the Centering Framework

Birner (1998) analyzes the construction of inversion within the centering theory, claiming that the preposed constituent in the inversion structure represents the backward-looking center that connects the current utterance to the previous discourse. However, this paper refutes such a strong claim, pointing out various problems of her work. Instead, this paper argues that the preposed element in the inversion construction is merely the preferred center under the condition that the ranking of the forward-looking centers is determined by the surface word order, rather than by grammatical relations. Thus, this paper claims that the discourse function of the construction of inversion is not text development but merely prominence-giving, in the sense of Ili$\acute{c}$ (1998).