By Word order, Negatives

Hi, At The American Heritage Book of English Usage at Bartleby.com in the section named "1. Grammar: Traditional Rules, Word Order, Agreement, and Case", I saw this line in its note: However, when a verb is negated by not or never, and is followed by a negative verb phrase (but not an...

What does "net effect" mean? (Note the word order.) It's the final effect resulting from a combination of many different effects, some of which add to the final effect, some of which detract from it. It's the final result after all the positive and negative components are combined. A...

... 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...

The grammatical mistake is in the word order. "Inversion after an initial negative" rule. Neither is he ill-mannered, nor is he dishonest. Alternately, put the subject first: He is neither ill-mannered nor dishonest. You can do more than one nor, but that's not very common. CJ

Clive wrote: Hi, What is the correct word order (if there is one) for two object pronouns? For example, is is "He hated her and me" or "He hated me and her"? I wouldn't really say that grammar requires a particular order. Such matters usually come from politeness. eg For subjects, Mary and...

Cool Breeze wrote:Unpredictable is not negative enough to cause inversion in modern English although it probably often did change the word order in Old English. These days most people would probably say: She was unpredictable enough to show up in my office.The second sentence might read: She...

Unpredictable is not negative enough to cause inversion in modern English although it probably often did change the word order in Old English. These days most people would probably say: She was unpredictable enough to show up in my office.The second sentence might read: She was a strong queen...

To use the auxiliary 'do' to form questions and negative clauses is a phenomenon that is only about 400 years old. 'Do' existed in Old English but it meant 'to cause' as in What caused the accident? In Shakespeare's day 'do' began to be used in questions and there were two ways to form a...

Hi guys, Not for nothing is the city a sister city of New York can be rephrased as The city is not a sister city of New York for nothing. The meaning is that there is, indeed, a reason. The double negative adds emphasis. For example,if someone asks me to help them with their English, I...

Hello, Janissary, 1. If a clause begins with a negative adverb, inverted word order must usually be used, with the subject following the Simple Present or Simple Past of the verb to be, or the first auxiliary. In the case of the Simple Present or Simple Past of any verb other than the verb to...