Sunday, March 25, 2012

grammaticality - "Not only should I" in declarative sentence




There is a phrase "Not only should I succeed but others should fail". And I saw it many times in similar structures that the order of words "should I" are as if they were in a questioning sentence. (In a declarative sentence the order is "I should")



Can anyone give me an explanation why that is?


Answer



I don't know the specific grammatical rule for this, but it is common to invert subject and verb when adverbs or adverb phrases are placed at the beginning of a sentence. See more
here:




http://www.englishgrammar.org/inversion-subject-verb/#udVqaYOcOyIydwVs.99



and here:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_sentence


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