"Nowhere is placed directly after the verb"

[noxavis]

I am writing an essay on negation and in my research found this statement on an English learners website.

[FONT='Times New Roman', serif]"The adverb nowhere is placed directly after the verb"

I just want to make sure if that is always the case. I tried to think of examples where it might not be the case but couldn't come up with any other than

" I can find him nowhere", where nowhere is actually not placed directly after the verb. I know that usually you would say " I can't find him anywhere"

anyway so the second part of my question is if "I can find him nowhere" is grammatically wrong?

Thank you for your help.[/FONT]

 

[Raymott]

Nowhere can I find such a rule. Can you post a link to the website?
"I can find him nowhere" is correct, if a little unusual.

 

[tzfujimino]

... and you can find lots of example sentences including the word "nowhere" here: http://fraze.it/n_search.jsp?q=nowhere&ff=&ffp=0&ffo=false&cpradius=1&l=0&t=0&sugg=off

What it says on the website you mentioned/provided is not wrong, but it is indeed misleading, in my opinion.

 

[noxavis]

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/blog/learn-english/grammar/negative-adverbs/

that's were I found the statement.
I think this statement maybe applies when nowhere is used as an adverb only. Could that be? Or is nowhere always an adverb? Because when you say "we ended up in the middle of nowhere" it's a noun, no? I'm confused.

 

[Raymott]

That site is wrong. It's also wrong when it says "Never is always placed after the verb BE or an auxiliary verb." The truth is that 'never' is usually placed after the verb BE or an auxiliary verb.

 

[noxavis]

Yes that is what I wrote as well I don't like saying always because there is usually an exception to the rule with almost everything.

one more thing. If I say
"Nowhere is there more of a population problem than in this city"[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif](example taken from merriam webster) do I put "nowhere" in the beginning of the sentence to stress it?[/FONT]

 

[Raymott]

"Nowhere is there more of a population problem than in this city"(example taken from merriam webster) do I put "nowhere" in the beginning of the sentence to stress it?

Yes, it could be used that way for emphasis.