Inversion – Understanding ‘How + Adjective + Subject + Verb’ Structures

That is subject-dependent inversion, which is an information packaging construction where the subject is switched with an internal dependent of the clause.

For your original example, the usual canonical ordering would be something like:

1. "[A dog] lies [behind me]."

which has Subject-Verb-Dependent order (or S-V-PP order).

With subject-dependent inversion, it becomes:

2. "[Behind me] lies [a dog]."

which has Dependent-Verb-Subject order (or PP-V-S order).

A writer will often use subject-dependent inversion when the subject contains newer info than the info that is contained in the fronted dependent, or when the fronted dependent is a locative expression (e.g. "behind me"). We often prefer to have the newer info at the end of a clause or sentence, and have the older info at the front (which is usually the subject slot). Locative expressions are often moved to the front in order to help set the setting for the rest of the sentence.

You'll find this type of construction more often in edited prose than in informal writing or casual speech, because it usually takes some editing effort to apply this (subject-dependent inversion) to a sentence. Also, there are pragmatic constraints on when this type of inversion is acceptable.

For more info, there's the 2002 CGEL, pages 1385-90, "5 Subject-dependent inversion". For example, starting on page 1386, there's section "5.2 Pragmatic constraints on inversion", and its first paragraph is:

For inversion to be felicitous, the following conditions must obtain:

[3]

• i. The preposed phrase must not represent information that is less familiar in the discourse than that represented by the postposed NP.

• ii. Unless the preposed dependent is semantically locative, the inversion requires an appropriate open proposition that is discourse-old.

• iii. The verb must not represent information that is new to the discourse.

And the discussion on these pragmatic constraints on subject-dependent inversion goes on for another couple of pages.

NOTE: The 2002 CGEL is the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

It's a specific phrasing of "It is not that grief ever ends, but [other factors occur]" similar as with your cooking example.

On one hand it's increasingly common in English to drop implied subject. "I" is increasingly dropped - "Went shopping, got a new bag". "It" and "It's" is commonly dropped. "What's the weather?" "Raining." Thus the leading "It is" is dropped. On the other hand, the argument of opposites - the "but" - is complex enough that it requires several sentences to be presented, so our clause is cut with a full stop, and the arguments follow as new sentences. That way this sentence is a part of a larger structure, requiring the follow-up to give the full thought.

The sort of inversion you thought of is fairly rare in English, present either in quite fossilized word pairs, archaic expression or in heavy stylization of language for poetic purposes. It won't occur like that in a regular, non-poetic text in a phrase where it's not usual.