Adverbs at the beginning of a sentence.

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pieanne

#206666 Thu, 16 Mar 06 09:17 AM

I agree with you, Paco Smile [:)]

The conjugated part of a verbal form should be in the second position - regardless of adverbs like yesterday or complement/adverbs separated by a comma -. I'll add that the subject cannot follow the main verb, that's why in the above construction it is replaced by an auxiliary (do, does, did).

Yet, it doesn't explain why you sometimes read "said he", for example... Sad [:(]

pieanne

Joined on Thu, Jan 20 2005

South of France ...But I'm Belgian!

Veteran Member (7,512)

I'm glad to help, but I'm not a native! And please excuse my typos...

Verbs, Constructions, Adverbs, Auxiliaries, Commas

MrPedantic

#206749 Thu, 16 Mar 06 02:58 PM

1. Hardly does Juan remember the accident that took his sister's life.

This sounds a bit odd to me. "Hardly" here relates to the degree of remembering; but it seems to me that when "hardly" fronts a sentence, it tends to have a temporal sense:

2. Hardly had the Prince touched the ground than he felt himself violently seized by an unseen power...

(i.e. the Prince was seized a split-second after touching the ground.)

So I would rephrase #1 thus:

3. Juan hardly remembers the accident that took his sister's life.

MrP

MrPedantic