inversion

See also: inversión and Inversion

English

Etymology

From Latin inversiōnem.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈvɚ.ʒən/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɪnˈvɜː.ʃən/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)ʃən

Noun

inversion (countable and uncountable, plural inversions)

1. The action of inverting.
2. The act of being in an inverted state; being upside down, inside out, or in a reverse sequence.
3. (music) The reversal of an interval; the move of one pitch in an interval up or down an octave.
4. (music) The position of a chord which has a note other than the root as its bass note.
5. (music) The flipping of a melody or contrapuntal line so that high notes become low and vice versa; the reversal of a pitch contour.
6. (genetics) A segment of DNA in the context of a chromosome that is reversed in orientation relative to a reference karyotype or genome.
7. (meteorology) A situation where air temperature increases with altitude (the ground being colder than the surrounding air).

   Synonym: temperature inversion

8. A section of a roller coaster where passengers are temporarily turned upside down.
9. (grammar) Deviation from standard word order by putting the predicate before the subject. It takes place in questions with auxiliary verbs and in normal, affirmative clauses beginning with a negative particle, for the purpose of emphasis.

   Inversion takes place in the sentence 'Is she here?' — 'is', the predicate, is before 'she', the subject. (with an auxiliary verb)

   Inversion takes place in the sentence 'Never have I done that.' — 'have', the predicate, is before 'I', the subject, due to 'never' being the first word of the sentence. (for the purpose of emphasis)

   • 2007/08, abergs, “INFL-to-COMP movement”, in English Language and Linguistics Online‎^[1], archived from the original on 8 January 2018:

     Question formation involves the phenomenon commonly known as subject-auxiliary inversion, a change in word order in which the auxiliary moves in front of the subject.
     (a) Here we shall describe this phenomenon in terms of movement of the element under INFL into COMP position.
     (b) According to this analysis, what looks like an exchanging of positions between the subject and auxiliary (or INFL element, in GB terms) is actually the movement of the INFL element past the subject position into COMP.
     (c) INFL-to-COMP movement seems to be triggered by the presence of the [+WH] feature in COMP.

10. (algebra) An operation on a group, analogous to negation.
11. (psychology, obsolete) Homosexuality, particularly in early psychoanalysis.
    • 1897, W. Havelock Ellis, Sexual Inversion, page 202:

      We can seldom, therefore, congratulate ourselves on the success of any "cure" of inversion.

    • 1975, R. M. Koster, The Dissertation, page 118:

      My father, León Fuertes, was a fag three years; […] He put on all the trappings of inversion: the twittered mouthings, the hyper-feminine moues, the languid mincings.

Derived terms

• circle inversion
• dependency inversion principle
• first inversion
• inversion illusion
• inversion of control
• inversion pair
• inversion table
• inversion therapy
• island of inversion
• nitrogen inversion
• paracentric inversion
• penile inversion
• pericentric inversion
• population inversion
• retrograde inversion
• second inversion
• sexual inversion
• temperature inversion
• third inversion
• Walden inversion

 

Translations

being in an inverted state

• French: inversion (fr) f
• Irish: aisiompú m
• Spanish: transposición (es) f, alteración (es) f, invertimiento m

musical senses

• French: renversement (fr) m

deviation from standard word order by putting the predicate before the subject, in questions with auxiliary verbs and for the purpose of emphasis

• Armenian: շրջադասություն (hy) (šrǰadasutʻyun), շրջում (hy) (šrǰum)
• Bengali: অপেক্ষিক f (opekkhik)
• Bulgarian: инве́рсия (bg) f (invérsija)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 倒裝 / 倒装 (zh) (dàozhuāng)

• Finnish: käänteinen sanajärjestys
• French: inversion (fr) f
• German: Inversion (de) f
• Greek: αναστροφή (el) f (anastrofí), αντιστροφή (el) f (antistrofí)
• Ido: inversigo (io)
• Japanese: 倒置法 (とうちほう, tōchihō), 転倒 (ja) (てんとう, tentō), 倒置 (ja) (とうち, tōchi)
• Macedonian: инве́рзија f (invérzija)
• Portuguese: inversão (pt) f
• Russian: инве́рсия (ru) f (invérsija), обра́тный поря́док слов m (obrátnyj porjádok slov)
• Spanish: inversión (es) f, hipérbaton (es) m, hipérbato m, anástrofe m

See also

• twelve tone technique
• serialism

References

• (music) DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. →ISBN, Ch. 6.
• (genetics) Lars Feuk, Andrew R. Carson and Stephen W. Scherer (February 2006). "Structural variation in the human genome," Nature, 7:85.
• (genetics) Freeman et al., "Copy number variation: New insights into genome diversity" Genome Res 2006; 16: 949-61. — "DNA copy number variation has long been associated with specific chromosomal rearrangements and genomic disorders, but its ubiquity in mammalian genomes was not fully realized until recently. Although our understanding of the extent of this variation is still developing, it seems likely that, at least in humans, copy number variants (CNVs) account for a substantial amount of genetic variation."

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛ̃.vɛʁ.sjɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

inversion f (plural inversions)

1. inversion
2. deviance (especially sexual)

   Synonym: déviance

Further reading

• “inversion”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Venetan

Etymology

Compare Italian inversione

Noun

inversion f (invariable)

1. inversion (all senses)
2. reversal, reversing