Well, for the answer to that we have to go back to ancient Greek music theory, and when you read about this--it's really turgid stuff-- but believe it or not, I teach a course on this at the graduate level.

这个,要回答那个问题,恐怕要追溯到古希腊的音乐理论,每次读这些都会云山雾罩的,不管你信不信,我曾在研究生中开过这个课程

耶鲁公开课 - 聆听音乐课程节选

We're not going to get into that 'cause that takes us into heavy-duty music theory, but it's--if we don't have root position then we've got some other note of the triad in the bass, and we've got some kind of chord inversion, so that's what that particular term means up there.

我们就不深究这个问题了，这是一个冗长的音乐理论，但是如果没有了原位，三和弦的低音被另一个音所替代，这就是一种和弦转位，这就是这个词在这里的意思。

耶鲁公开课 - 聆听音乐课程节选