question regarding when my sentence starts with hardly

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Mnrz57

#441745 Mon, 12 Nov 07 04:59 PM

hi all
I know when a sentence starts with rarely, hardly etc it turn into question form like
rarely have I been there

the question is that how about when you are using auxiliary verbs such as CAN

hardly you can find a car here
or
hardly can you find a car here

which one is correct?

thanks

Mnrz57

Joined on Mon, Apr 17 2006

New Member (11)

Verbs, Auxiliaries

Cool Breeze

#441751 Mon, 12 Nov 07 05:20 PM

Hi Mnrz

The grammatical rules apply but hardly is not a very natural word for your sentence. It's all right with rarely:

Rarely can I find a car here.

CB

Cool Breeze

Joined on Fri, Apr 7 2006

Helsinki, Finland

Senior Member (2,685)

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.- Mark Twain

CalifJim

#441846 Mon, 12 Nov 07 09:40 PM

... how about when you are using auxiliary verbs such as CAN?

Same rule. With these negative polarity items like hardly and rarely, invert subject and operator so that you have the same word order as you would use in a question.

For more on operators, see also Post:245063 and Post:406973.

CJ

CalifJim

Joined on Mon, Aug 2 2004

California

Veteran Member (16,533)

"There are no facts, only interpretations" - Nietzsche

Verbs, Negatives, Auxiliaries, Word order

Goodman

#441873 Mon, 12 Nov 07 10:48 PM

Mnrz57 wrote:
hi all
I know when a sentence starts with rarely, hardly etc it turn into question form like
rarely have I been there

the question is that how about when you are using auxiliary verbs such as CAN

hardly you can find a car here
or
hardly can you find a car here

which one is correct?

thanks