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At the bottom of the device is a microphone and a microUSB port for data connections and charging (Source)

At the bottom of the device is an adverb of place. Why is the subject of the sentence an adverb? I didn't think adverbs could be subjects!

Or, if it is not the subject, what is it? And why does the verb come right after it, just like a subject?

Janus Bahs Jacquet
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Kiti
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    no, I just want to know if the sentence is ok cos it was written probably by native English speaker & the Native English speaker may write sentence different from what I learned grammar in School. Just want to know if that kind of structure " Adverb + verb" is acceptable? – Kiti Jun 01 '14 at 11:30
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    An adverb can be moved to the head of a clause just like any other element; when this happens, it triggers subject-operator inversion, so you end up with Adv – Vb – Subj. This is perfectly common. Compare “Here are your keys”, for example. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 01 '14 at 12:10
  • Possible duplicate of Inversion in "only [adverb] have they" (see also this answer, among others). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 01 '14 at 12:18
  • thax, i know "Here is your key" but didn't know Inversion structure can be applied in other form. Thax – Kiti Jun 01 '14 at 12:22
  • I am not seeing an adverb of place being used as a noun. I am seeing an adverb of place being used as an adverb of place. Not sure what you're trying to say there. – RegDwigнt Jun 01 '14 at 13:11
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    @JanusBahsJacquet This is not an adverb nor an adverbial phrase. What you said isn't correct either. Consider: At the bottom of the garden can John play football. This subject auxiliary inversion is archaic and not required. The inversion in Kiki's sentence is permissible precisely because At the bottom of the device is a complement of the verb and not an adjunct or adverbial phrase. – Araucaria - Him Jun 01 '14 at 13:31
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    @RegDwigнt There is no adverb of place here. The prepositional phrase *At the bottom..* is the complement of the verb *be*. – Araucaria - Him Jun 01 '14 at 13:34
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    @RegDwigнt, Tim, Janus, Erik. I think this is actually a very interesting information packaging question, which would be of interest to many readers on the site. Most tefl teachers I know would find the grammar difficult to unpick. Us commentators are already messing it up badly enough ourselves! Also the constraints on this type of subject-dependent (NOT subject-auxiliary inversion) are worthy of some comment. The question should be opened up, once it has been edited sympathetically. – Araucaria - Him Jun 01 '14 at 13:45
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    @Araucaria I don't know about teachers, but as a complete noob I have no troubles whatsoever unpicking the grammar. Here is a car. Over there is a tree. Across the street is a pet shop. In New Orleans there is a house they call the Rising Sun. At the bottom of the device is a microphone. The structure is so mundane and ubiquitous I refuse to believe a teacher will have trouble with it. – RegDwigнt Jun 01 '14 at 14:00
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    Well, why don't you read some of the comments above? People seem to be under the impression that a) this is a form of subject-auxiliary inversion b) that the inversion can take place with an adverbial phrase or adjunct. Neither of these is the case. With the verb *be* we can only do it when the prepositional phrase or adverb is the complement of the verb. Nobody seems to know this is not the case with other verbs, or that subject-dependent inversion happens much more rarely with other verbs. Kiki won't be out of place amongst other readers in thinking that the PP is the subject. – Araucaria - Him Jun 01 '14 at 14:14
  • @Araucaria I disagree. It is an adverbial phrase (not an adverb, of course—that was my shoddy wording), just one that happens to be used as the predicate in the clause, which is perfectly permissible. Under normal circumstances, subject-auxiliary inversion is more or less mandatory when adverbial phrases are actively fronted, though obviously not when they are raised to sentential adverbials. Phrases like “Here it is” are the exception to this, and only possible under certain restrictions (pronominal subjects, deictic adverbials, be, etc.). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 01 '14 at 18:51
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    @JanusBahsJacquet I don't think that's true. Compare They drink tea in England , In England they drink tea. There's no inversion even when the adverbial is fronted. The same goes for temporal adverbials too. Only negative polarity adverbs cause inversion when pre-posed, maybe because they're being moved from post-auxiliary position. Re adverbial phrase, surely the name's warranted when functioning as a verb phrase modifier/adjunct, like an adverb. If in predicative function, surely it is an adjectival phrase, behaving like an adjective? After all, it's actually a prepositional phrase:) – Araucaria - Him Jun 01 '14 at 19:09
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I think it would be worth unblocking this don't you? It really isn't a duplicate of other questions, and there seems to be reasonable interest in it from other (quite well reputed) members. – Araucaria - Him Jun 01 '14 at 19:33
  • @Araucaria I wouldn’t consider “In England, they drink tea” a fronted adverbial clause, but one raised to a sentential adverbial—it stands outside the clause entirely and thus (naturally) does not affect word order. Most types of adverbial phrases cannot really be fronted at all in Modern English, but are raised outside the clause instead. Of course, that ends up being just a question of terminology in the end. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 01 '14 at 20:53
  • @JanusBahsJacquet my reply yesterday seemed a bit terse, unfriendly - an unwanted side-effect of trying to fit an essay into a comments box! My main point is that, let's say that what you say is correct - this is not actually a simple issue. Kiti's example is worthy of some deeper investigation. – Araucaria - Him Jun 02 '14 at 14:00
  • @Araucaria I agree, and I have voted to reopen. I have also taken the liberty of editing out the ELL-like part of the question, replacing it with something that was perhaps not originally spelt out in the question, but which it nonetheless indirectly asked, and which fits the discussion and answers better. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jun 02 '14 at 14:07
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Much better put, I agree. :) – Araucaria - Him Jun 02 '14 at 14:12

2 Answers2

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  • At the bottom of the device is a microphone and a microUSB port for data.

The way the information is organised in this sentence is very interesting. If you look at it quickly, you may think that at the bottom of the microphone is the subject of the verb be - but it isn't! When we use constructions like this, we rearrange the parts of the sentence for a special reason. Afterwards, it isn't always easy to see what function the different parts of the sentence have. The grammar of the sentence is perfectly correct, though.

The subject.

Let's take a closer look at how the sentence works. The example you give is a bit complicated, because it includes a co-ordination with and (a microphone and a microUSB). So here are some simpler sentences with the same general structure:

  1. At the bottom of the garden is the large shed.
  2. At the bottom of the garden are the large sheds.

Verbs in English agree with their subjects for number and person. Here we can see that the verb be is taking the third person singular form is in the first example, and the plural form are in the second. The only thing that is different about the two sentences is that in 1) shed is singular and in 2) sheds is plural. This seems to suggest that the large shed(s) might be the subject.

Someone might complain about this: At the bottom of the garden is not really a proper 'thing'! Maybe it is the subject, but we can use it with either a third person singular or a plural verb form. This is a quite reasonable theory, so let's test it:

  • At the bottom of the garden are the shed. *

This is definitely very wrong indeed. In this construction the verb must agree with the noun phrase that comes after it. This is strong evidence that the large shed is the subject in sentence 1) . Some more evidence for this is that sentence 1) gives us exactly the same information as:

  • The large shed is at the bottom of the garden.

This sentence has all the same words as sentence 1, and it has the same literal meaning. In this sentence the large shed is definitely the subject!

The rest of the sentence.

If the large shed is the subject of 1), what is at the bottom of the garden? In your question you described it as an adverb. It looks like what some people call an adverbial phrase, but it doesn't have the same function in this sentence. Compare these two examples:

  • I play football every day at the bottom of the garden.
  • The shed is at the bottom of the garden.

In the first sentence at the bottom of the garden is giving us extra information about the action described in the sentence. It is not essential. It is not important for the structure of the sentence either. We can take it away and the sentence is still fine. So here at the bottom of the garden is an adjunct - it behaves like an adverb. In the second sentence though, at the bottom of the garden seems to be essential information. And if we take it away, both the meaning and the grammar are bad, as we can see:

  • I play football every day. (correct)
  • The large shed is. * (wrong)

In the second sentence the verb be needs a complement - another phrase to complete the sentence. If we don't have it, the sentence is badly formed. Here, at the bottom of the garden is the complement of the verb be ( - in the same way that cheese is the complement of the like in the sentence I like cheese). It is not behaving like an adverb.

Your sentence is an example of subject-complement inversion. This means that the subject moves to the end of the sentence and the complement moves to the beginning. It is very common with complements that tell us where something happened or where something is. With the verb be this kind of inversion is only possible with a complement and not with an adjunct (read adverbial phrase). Compare:

  • My only friend is in the garden / In the garden is my only friend. (correct)
  • My only friend is happy in the garden / In the garden is happy my only friend. (wrong)

With other verbs we can sometimes do subject-adjunct inversion, but only in very restricted environments. It is much more rare. Here is an example though. Notice that there is no auxiliary verb necessary here. - this is not subject-auxiliary inversion:

  • Five years later came the final straw.

When do we use subject-complement inversion?

We normally use this kind of inversion because we want to put the new or interesting information at the end of the sentence where it has more emphasis. Sometimes we do it because we want to link the complement with something we have already been talking about. However, if we have already been talking about the subject but we haven't been talking about the complement, we cannot do subject-complement inversion:

  • There was a huge garden outside the palace. In the garden were three grizzly bears. (correct)
  • There was a huge garden outside the palace. In front of the long hallway was the garden. (X)
Araucaria - Him
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    The be is just the auxiliary that's necessary for non-verbal predicates (in this case, the predicate is (located) at the bottom of the device. The predicate adjective located can always be inserted (but is usually deleted) when a locative phrase like this is the predicate. The be is just to catch the tense and point to the predicate. – John Lawler Jun 01 '14 at 17:16
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I think is is a semi-correct sentence.

You assume that At the bottom of the device is being used as the subject of the sentence. However I think that this is not correct, the subject of the sentence is a microphone and a microUSB port for data connections and charging. So At the bottom of the device is being linked as a property of a microphone and a microUSB port for data connections and charging. The difference with a conventional sentence being that the subject and the adjective have switched places.

However, the verb is not correct because it should be are instead of is.

tchrist
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Dracosni
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