Inversion when you start a sentence with 'much'

Status
Not open for further replies.

popri

Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Member Type
Student or Learner
Native Language
Japanese
Home Country
Japan
Current Location
Japan
I’m studying inversion now. I hear that inversion occurs when ‘much’ is used at the very beginning of a sentence as ‘only’ is used at the top of a sentence, but I can’t find any examples where a subject and an auxiliary verb are inverted. I’ve found many of ‘only’ examples. Would you give me some examples of ‘much’?
 
Much do you have to learn about inversion.
 
Thank you for the example.
Not a change the subject, but is it OK to say “No words did I say.”? This is what I’ve made up by myself. My book doesn’t give me any examples of inversion starting from an object with no.
 
Not a change the subject, but is it OK to say “No words did I say [no period ("full stop") in British English)]”? This is what I’ve made up by myself. My book doesn’t give me any examples of inversion starting from an object with no.
Don't include final periods in quoted text unless that text ends the sentence it's quoted in.

Your sentence is grammatical but not natural in modern English.
 
Thank you for correcting my English. Can you think of any natural inversion sentence starting with ‘no’?
 
No longer will I put up with your nonsense!
 
Thank you for the example. Let me correct my question.

Are there any examples which start from no + object and is followed by inversion?

My grammar book says in my language that inversion occurs when object moves to the top of a sentence with negative words such as not, little, and no. There are examples of ‘not’ and ‘little’ but there is no example of ‘no’.

In the sentence ‘No longer will I put up with your nonsense’, I guess object is not ‘longer’ but ‘your nonsense’, right?
 
It's a bit of a desperate example but "No food shall I eat until Sunday". It's grammatical but it will sound very odd if you say it.
 
It's grammatical but it will sound very odd if you say it.

What do you mean by that? It’s odd if you say it, but it’s OK if it’s written English?

Thank you for the example anyway.
 
Thank you for the example.

Is it possible to change from "No other love have I" to “No other love do I have”? Does it also sound natural to you?
 
Thank you for the example.

Is it possible to change from "No other love have I" to “No other love do I have”? Does it also sound natural to you?

Neither sentence is natural in conversational English. The original is from a song written in a style that accepts very artificial constructions.
 
There are about 900 results for "No wonder was it that . . ." on Google Books, but most of them are over a hundred years old.
 
There are about 900 results for "No wonder was it that . . ." on Google Books, but most of them are over a hundred years old.

No sooner had I read that than this sentence appeared in my mind's eye.
 
Thank you for the example and I’m here after a couple of days interval.

Is “No better example than this will you find” natural as written English?

I still need to understand even though it is over a hundred years old. For me, it is important to understand natural, unnatural, spoken or written English because I canÂ’t tell which is which. I need to study more.
 
Is “No better example than this will you find” natural as written English?
Not particularly, but my example beginning no sooner is.
 
I've found another exmaple: No aid did he receive in his difficulties.
How does it sound to you? It's very old written English again?

I've found many 'No sooner...' patterned English.

Now that you've given me lots of example sentences, I guess 'No object+auxiliary verb+Subject' patterned English is very rare and unnatural. Do you agree?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top