Not until

[monty python]

I was wondering...Can you actually invert the order as in :

Not until HAD he ARRIVED home from the restaurant he felt safe -at last

(just mixed the 2 sentences because restaurants can be pretty scary,you know... hyper-protective waiters...outrageous bills...

 

[Tdol]

No- it doesn't work. ;-)

 

[diana monzon]

Yes. The 2nd part, "did he find he'd left..." is OK.

he did (in fact) find.... (did refers to 'it's a fact'; used for emphasis)



did he (in fact) find.... (did is moved to the verb position)

Not until X verb Y
X = he had arrived home
Y = he find he had left the key....

If we add a verb, then 'did' becomes ungrammatical:

It was not until he had arrived home did he find.... Ungrammatical



By the way, the original sentence is not grammatical to me. I prefer:

Not until he had arrived home did he find he had left....

it's easy because you use did most of the time in questions! and as a past action! so did has nothing to do in the first one

 

[vpleht]

Hello, I just registered here.

Can I asked this:
The refugees continued to feel unsafe until they had crossed the border.
So how can we rewrite it with "Not until"?

If you say
"The refugees continued to feel unsafe until they had crossed the border",
wouldn't it mean this -- The refugees felt unsafe before crossing the border. After they had crossed the border, they felt safe.

Now, we rewrite it with "not until":
"Not until they had crossed the border did the refugees (begin to) feel safe" -- as opposed to feeling unsafe. For the meaning to stay the same, we had to change unsafe to safe.
In other words, "Until" means "from the past to point X", whereas "not until" means "from point X to the future".

I found this forum when I searched for "not until" and its usage, because I wanted to find out how to complete a sentence in an English exercise. This is the sentence:
" Y he'd got an official warning which had stated quite clearly that..." etc. Y has to have the meaning of "Not until last summer".
But am I right that you can't just say "Not until last summer he'd got an official warning..." because the word order would break? It should be "not until last summer had he got". But I can't change that. So correct me if I'm wrong, but does it go like this:

"It was not until last summer that he'd got an official warning...". If we put a subject "It" in the beginning, we can use direct word order in the subordinate clause, right? Without "It" there would be only one subject, "He", and because of that only one clause, which would have to have an inverse word order (correct term?) because of the "not until" in the beginning.

Additionally, when I registered here, I got this message:

"Until you have activated your account, you will not be able to post messages in these forums."

How would you change that into "not until"?

 

[Wuisi]

Here, the restricting or limiting side is the whole of the Not until clause, inversion comes in the main clause.

 

[DANTRANG]

i thik the second one is the correct answer

Dear All,



^^!! This is too difficult for me.
I can't understand what it exactly means.

Is this what it means?
He did not find that he had left it in the restaurant until he arrived home.

:?:
When will we use this sentence pattern?
Why do we use this sentence pattern?

Thanks !

 

[Why-ME]

The first one is used; the other one isn't. Thus, it is not an apt comparison.



The second one is not used. You might say, "I won't stay here until 9:00pm" with the same meaning.



Althoiugh the item was at the restaurant during the entire drive home, it was not until (not before) he arrived at the house that he remembered leaving it there. (Did I explain that adequately?)



The action (remembering that he had left the item at the restaurant) happens after he arrives at his house. The item was at the restaurant the whole time, but he didn't remember it before then. The remembering happened after he got home.

How about: Ron, I´ll stay here not until 9:00.

 

[Cold Killer]

weeeeeeeeeeell done

 

[BookAddict]

Negative pronouns and words with negative meaning
-> word-order: Verb - Subject


Seldom did he realize
Never could he image
Not until did he arrive
A little can he know
Only this can he say

 

[muvin]

:roll: thanks for the explanations..
I found almost the same sentence somewhat in a movie ...

 

[Chico3576]

;-)

Very good poll. At the beginning of my studies this kind of sentence pattern would make my mind blow up with thinking. Though I'm able already to understand what it means, I don't yet know why it must be structured that way.

 

[Tdol]

I'd put it down as to something to learn without questioning why. ;-)

 

[Chico3576]

I'd put it down as to something to learn without questioning why. ;-)

Wise words sir... I have no doubt that I only managed to acquire a somewhat decent knowledge of the English language by not questioning why things are so, say, why do I have to use the Present Perfect Tense in this situation and the Past Simple in that other situation? Or, why do I have to structure my sentence like the one you put forward to discussion here to convey a particular idea, say, in a more stylish way as we know that it could have been structured in a less complex format. But anyways, I do believe that a great deal of English learners get so obsessed with grammar rules that they end up developing a necessity of figuring out why things are like they are and get stuck on their studies as a result; consequently they aren't likely to move anywhere further. We should accept the fact that native speakers talk like that in this particular context or situation and "full stop" Whenever you find yourself in a similar situation you're supposed to express yourself in that way. I have to admit that this was the only way I could find to understand the Present Perfect and the innumerable contexts in which it is used. lol Had I kept asking myself why is this or that so, I most certainly wouldn't be taking part in this forum right now.

 

[Tdol]

When people walk through a forest, they make paths- that doesn't mean that there aren't other ways to walk through the forest, but people tend to follow paths. When learning a language, we just have to accept this- I'm learning Tagalog at beginner level now and the same logic is true- they do things certain ways because everybody else does, so learning the pattern and accepting that there may be no explanation is a good way to progress. Often the answer to why is because and no more. :up:

 

[Chico3576]

When people walk through a forest, they make paths- that doesn't mean that there aren't other ways to walk through the forest, but people tend to follow paths. When learning a language, we just have to accept this- I'm learning Tagalog at beginner level now and the same logic is true- they do things certain ways because everybody else does, so learning the pattern and accepting that there may be no explanation is a good way to progress. Often the answer to why is because and no more. :up:

Just loved this Tdol. I'm gonna show it to all of my students. :-D

 

[keen learner]

;-)

Which one is correct?

 

[Tdol]

The second

 

[keen learner]

The second

Yippee...Thanks

 

[cosmober]

:-DI suppose that, in this case, 'did' is used to emphasise as it usually happens in affirmative statements.