adverbs - Subject-auxiliary inversions not associated with questions





Inversion in “only [adverb] have they”



Is there some rule governing the following, or similar, subject-auxiliary inversions (*"Rarely they do see the light of day", *"Never I have been so insulted")?



In fancy sit-down restaurants, you can order a large meal and halfway through the main course, take a little dead cockroach or a piece of glass out of your pocket and place it deftly on the plate. Jump up astonished and summon the headwaiter. "Never have I been so insulted. I could have been poisoned" you scream slapping down the napkin. You can refuse to pay and leave, or let the waiter talk you into having a brand new meal on the house for this terrible inconvenience. (link)


Rarely do they see the light of day; it's generally judged to be in no one's commercial interest that they should. Just occasionally, however, like a seemingly dormant volcano, they explode into the open. (link)




Answer



Subject-Auxiliary Inversion with Adverb-Fronting is simply a Negative Polarity Item (NPI).



‘NPI’ is a term applied to lexical items, fixed phrases, or syntactic construction types that demonstrate unusual behavior around negation. NPIs might be words or phrases that occur only in negative-polarity contexts (fathom, in weeks) or have an idiomatic sense in such contexts (not too bright, drink a drop); or they might have a lexical affordance that only functions in such contexts (need/dare (not) reply); or a specific syntactic rule might be sensitive to negation, like Subject-Auxiliary Inversion with Adverb Fronting.



Subject-Auxiliary Inversion is OK with a fronted adverb that is a Negative Trigger. E.g, ever and frequently are not negative, but never is; hence:



  • *Ever have I seen such a thing.

  • *Frequently have I seen such a thing.

  • Never have I seen such a thing.


Details of this and related constructions are available here.


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