While I was listening to a guided meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn (who is a Native English-Speaker) I bumped into an expression that appears to contain a sort of inversion in an affirmative sentence.  I've looked it up in the  and it seems this is something not linked to the presence of be likely to.     Only if you know, or even suspect that it actually does, are you likely to have enough energy for the discipline of formal practice.
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I have seen this construction quite often:      Online ads have been around since the dawn of the Web, but only in   recent years have they become the rapturous life dream of Silicon   Valley.   What is the rule there?. When your sentence doesn't start with pronoun + verb, invert them as verb + pronoun?. I know it sounds awkward but is it possible (grammatically correct) to use something similar to:      Online ads have been around since the dawn of the Web, but only in   recent years they have become...   And in any case, does this only work with have (or has)? Maybe it works fine with 'had' but I can't think of an example right now.
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I know that the pattern manner-place-time shouldn't be taken too seriously if one wants to speak natural English.   In real life, people rarely use a string of adverbs. Speakers will easily break the pattern for emphatic or stylistic reasons (usually placing the adverb at the beginning of the sentence). Other factors such as length and specificity will also override the arrangement.  But I'm constructing illustrative sentences that highlight (and stick to) the Royal Order of Adverbs.   What all the online sources are doing is mixing adverbs and prepositional phrases, but I can't have the concept of prepositional phrases in my examples just yet. This means I should include only one-word or two-word adverbs (without prepositions).   So, I have these:    He sat quietly upstairs all day. She waited impatiently outside this morning. They gather noisily downtown every Saturday night.   Are the sentences above still correct, as in natural-sounding? Somehow they started sounding a bit off to me. I guess I just need to test them with a second pair of ears.
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Reopen note:  There is a quite finite and modest amount of evidence in the literature about this issue, which members can record here as they see fit. Less than there is for example about what a noun is or what a verb is, or how to tell what the Subject of a sentence is. It's a simple question, that people need to be able to get answered on a site such as this. It is of continuing interest as more recent questions such as  attest to. The fact that people disagree about the outcome of the evidence does not mean that there is too much evidence to be documented. Quite the reverse. They disagree because there is relatively little evidence altogether. However, it is seriously interesting evidence.   The question   What part of speech is to as in:   I need to know. To err is human, to forgive divine. What am I to do?   This question is not really about the difference in meaning between the examples. It is a question about what grammatical or syntactic reasons we have to classify this item as a particular part of speech. If arguing that it is 'its own part of speech', I'd like to know what grammatical - but not historical - reasons you have for your claim.   Just to clarify, I'm not asking about what assignment any particular authority or publication gives it. I'm interested to know the reasons why. Your own personal insights are also very welcome.  If you're a grammar anorak - like me - then you may want a list of the contenders out there from other grammarians. In no particular order:   preposition subordinator non-finite auxiliary verb modal verb inflectional element   Can you help?
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I am now reading  book and have noticed a couple of cases of weird (for non-native speaker) future tense usages.   The point of the kata is to train your fingers and your brain. I'll do a kata or two every day, often as part of settling to work. I might do it in Java, or in Ruby, or in Clojure, or in some other language for which I want to maintain my skills.`   The phrase about doing a kata or two every day looks perfect for Present Simple. Why does the authoer use Future Simple instead?   However, a professional also knows that there will be times when he will fail, his risk calculations will be wrong, his abilities will fall short; he'll look in the mirror and see an arrogant fool smiling back at him.   Shouldn't we use Present Simple after when/if in this kind of cases? I am especially curious about this case as sometimes I forget to switch to Present Simple after if/when and I thought it is a critical error (which I didn't expect to see in a book).
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All the while I was writing my answer , something was bothering me about this excerpt from the quotation:      When Adam delved and Eve span,     The past tense of delve is properly delved, but to keep the symmetry in tense, shouldn't the past tense of spin be spun here?  Why is it not?
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This has been bugging me for some time; I tried to look for previous questions here but my language tools may not be sharp enough to phrase my query correctly so please forgive me if this has already been posted here.  Speakers of English as a foreign language tend to incorrectly use the word "would" when using some particular subjunctive constructs. Here is  (this time presumably by a native English speaker):     If that would happen, you won’t be alone.     (One correct version being "If that happens, you won't be alone".) I have detected this in speakers of a number of languages so I feel this is more likely to be a feature of the English language itself than a carry-over from their native language.  I have a faint intuition that this is because , and it certainly doesn't help that , but I can neither make that precise nor even really phrase a concrete question. Can someone shed some light on this?    Edit: just to provide some real-world examples of what I mean, here is one example taken from :     Publish or Perish is designed to empower individual academics to present their case for research impact to its best advantage. We would be concerned if it would be used for academic staff evaluation purposes in a mechanistic way.   This is obviously ungrammatical (to me), but I'm not sure how to characterize the mistake, or what the likely causes are (e.g. whether it follows from analogous constructions in other languages).
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Occasionally I see constructs like this in English sentences:        Not only is this true in this case, but ...      What puzzles me is the "is this" part of it. The sentence is not a question, yet it seems to have a question-like order. Isn't this correct/preferred:        Not only this is true in this case, but ...      Are there other cases where non-question sentences contain question-like parts (so to speak)?
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From NPR, transcript .     Michelle Scott is reading from the Common Core math standards for   fifth-graders. She'll be teaching fifth next year, along with John   Gries. And together, they're writing—and rewriting—lessons   they'll need come September.   For the last sentence, did he want to say, “they're re-writing lessons they'll need if September comes”? He inverted the last part, put the verb “come” in the front and omitted “if”, right?   As far as I could determine, it seems only “if” with subjunctive voice could be used in this way. I don't think it's a subjunctive voice. In my impression, the subjunctive voice stands for those occasions when you're not sure whether it will happen or not, such as “If it were to rain, I'd pick you up.”   September will come sooner or later (it's not in limbo), so I'm wondering how to explain the sentence.
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Does it sound unnatural to you (natives) when people skip 's' ending of the verb in 3rd person? Heard it many times (e.g. in 50 cent songs - she go, she have, etc.) and always wondered how much it sounds ok.
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I saw the sentence like     Donald Trump to run for president next month.   in the newspaper on the internet.  But I don't know why we have to use to instead of will.  Is there any rule I don't know?  Can anyone tell me the reason why we should use to in the news?
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First, I'd like to apologize for the awkwardly-phrased title.   Instead of trying to explain the structure I'm thinking of, I'd like to give some context and then an example or two. I've used and seen this construction used conversationally, and if my memory and intuition serve, conversationally only. I'm curious to know if there is a formal term for it.  Ex 1  "If you don't like what I'm offering, the door is that way."  A purely logical interpretation would make little sense with this example. In this context, the inference is that the speaker is indicating to whomever he is speaking that they should leave, which suggests that there might be an elision, e.g.  "If you don't like what I'm offering, ... [then you may leave. T]...he door is that way."  Ex 2  "If you're hungry, I have food."  This is a similar context. The implication is that the speaker will offer food to whom she is speaking if they are hungry. A (strictly) logical interpretation would, again, make little sense (if you are hungry, then I have food doesn't convey any intent to provide it, nor does it make sense; the speaker always has food, she just will offer it if her guest is hungry).  I recognize that this might be too specific to have a term associated with it. I'm just curious to know what it is if it does exist.
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I have a friend from the southern U.S. who uses the phrase “might could” quite often. He’ll say, for example:     I might could do that this weekend.    When I first heard him say this, it made me do a double-take. I wasn’t sure whether it’s incorrect, or correct but just not idiomatic outside the southern U.S.
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I've always wondered this but never asked. Given this statement:     Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.   Should it be or or nor? This is on Wikipedia so they are probably correct in saying nor but why is this so? In my opinion it sounds like it should be or.  The more I think of it the more I think it can be left up to interpretation or emphasis. For example, it could be interpreted to mean:     Energy = ¬Created ∨ ¬Destroyed   or     Energy = ¬(Created ∨ Destroyed)   Some help here?
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I was  subject predicate inversion     inverted word-order... is also used in clauses introduced by a   negative or restrictive clause element. In the following example, the   initial element Not only is negative and is followed by inverted word   order: could congress declare...      (12) Not only could (v) Congress (S) declare (V) war but the states   were forbidden to engage in it without the consent of Congress.   I am struggling to intuitively apply this.  Can someone explain the rule? E.g. the former sounds wrong, but perhaps the latter inversion does less damage. Maybe not.  Is the sentence Not all my cigs lit a candidate for inversion in the first place? And why or why not?   Not all my cigs lit -> Not all my lit cigs Not all my cigs lit burning straight -> Not all my lit cigs burning straight   Specifically could the phrase in bold be such an inversion (please ignore whether it is):   Not all your light tongues talking aloud / could be profound
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Does      If man continues to scathe all of Earth and its seas, then this isn’t   the world I thought it to be   make sense? Or should I just replace the 'to' with 'would'?
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First of all, English is not my first language. I have a question, maybe a basic one, about this phrase:     The situation highlights the mismatch between some areas of training and available jobs to/for them.   Should it be "available jobs to them" or "available jobs for them"?  Sorry if the question is really basic.
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Non-na­tive speak­ers of­ten get con­fused about what the var­i­ous tens­es  and as­pects mean in English. With in­put from some of the folk here I've put to­geth­er a di­a­gram that I hope will pro­vide some clar­i­ty on the mat­ter.  I of­fer it as the first an­swer to this ques­tion. Con­sid­er it a liv­ing doc­u­ment. In­put is wel­come, and good sug­ges­tions will be  in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the di­a­gram.    No­ta bene: What this is not is a dis­cus­sion of whether there are  more than two tens­es in English. , to which this ques­tion is not in­tend­ed to sup­ply ar­gu­ments one way or the oth­er.  Here, the aim is to pro­vide an overview of what con­struc­tions English-speak­ing peo­ple use for con­vey­ing in­for­ma­tion about ac­tions re­fer­ring to past, present, and fu­ture, and to pro­vide it first and fore­most to pre­cise­ly the peo­ple who are like­ly to use "tense" as a catch-all term in their search, rather than to lin­guists who know bet­ter.  Break­ing News There is now an ex­cel­lent ELU blog ar­ti­cle ti­tled  . It is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed read­ing.