School: Figure of Speech problem

Question

This question is from the poem Television by Roald Dahl and it is there in our 10 STD school textbook. I and my teacher had a bit of conflict with the figures of speech here:

...In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen...

My teacher says that the above sentence is inversion, while I belive that it is not inversion, as the sentence forms complete meaning.

Please explain me what is right and what is wrong.

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

AnonymousMy teacher says that the above sentence is inversion

Inversion happens when we reverse (invert) the normal word order of a structure, most commonly the subject-verb word order. Examples of subject-verb inversion are questions and sentences that begin with a negative adverb.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/inversion

In your sentence, the prepositional phrase would normally come at the end of the sentence, like this:

We've watched them gaping at the screen in almost every house (that) we've been in.

But for a poetic effect the adverbial phrase has been re-located to the front. Perhaps that is what your teacher meant.
It's not your standard grammatical inversion though. It may be analogous to these adverbial inversions:

Adverb particles (e.g. up, down, in, out, on, off, away and back) can also come before the subject. The inversion is for the sake of emphasis.
Off they went on a hunting trip. (Inverted word order)
They went off on a hunting trip. (Normal word order)
Down he fell from his horse, with a heavy thud. (Inverted word order)
He fell down from his horse, with a heavy thud. (Normal word order)

Englishmaven · Answer

It is not uncommon for prepositional phrases to be introductory, and thus, placed at the beginning of a sentence.

School: Figure of Speech problem

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