Inversion

English Grammar - Inversion: "Had I known...", "Should you need..."

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• published: 02 Apr 2014
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http://www.engvid.com Should you need help understanding why the subject in this sentence comes after the verb, I can show you. In this English grammar lesson, we will look at sentences in which the subject and verb order is inverted, and the particular situations in which to use them. Take a quiz on this lesson here: http://www.engvid.com/english-grammar-inversion/ TRANSCRIPT Hi. Welcome again to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. Today's lesson is about inversion. Now, what does "inversion" mean? "Inversion" is when you change the order of something. Right? So we're looking at grammar. Usually, you know in a sentence a subject comes first and then a verb. Today we're going to look at situations where that is reversed. Now, of course, I'm sure that you know that in questions: "Are you sure?" the verb comes before the subject in all questions. That's what makes a question structure a question structure. However, there are other situations where we have this inversion, but we're looking at a sentence; we're not looking at a question. Now, the thing to understand about inversions is that they are very particular. There are only a few expressions that you're going to use inversion with. You can't put them in just about... In just any sentence that you want. The examples that I've written on the board are the ones that you might read or that you might want to write. There are other situations that use this, but unless you're writing poetry or artistic, creative novels - you don't need them and you don't really need to worry about them either. They're very rare. It's very rare you'll see them. It's very, very formal language style. And you'll recognize them, hopefully, when you do see them. So let's start here. When we have "not only". Generally speaking, when we have a sentence that begins with a negative, we're going to have inversion, but especially when you have "not only", you're going to have inversion. Okay? "Not only did he", so there's your verb, there's your subject, there's your verb. Okay? We have the helping verb, the auxiliary verb to start. "Not only did he win", and then we have the "but", "also" to go with "not only". This is like an expression that's fixed; you're always going to be looking at the same thing. "Not only did he win, but he also broke the record." Whatever. "Not only", inversion, "but also". "Under no circumstances", this is another expression that you'll see regularly. And again, we're looking at the negative construction which is why we're looking at the inversion. "Under no circumstances should you call her/call him." Okay? Whatever you do, don't call. "Under no circumstances". "Circumstances", basically situation. In no situation should you call. In no situation, same idea. Okay? Another negative: "nor". What is "nor"? Is the negative of "or". Okay? "Or", "nor". Again, many people don't use this word anymore; it's a little bit old-fashioned, a little bit high formality level. But... "The mayor of Toronto refused to resign, nor do we expect him to." Okay? So after "nor", we still have the inversion. Verb, subject, verb. Verb, subject. Okay? I'm not sure if you know the mayor of Toronto, he's very famous now. We're not very proud, but that's a whole other story. Next, so these are the three negatives. These two are also very similar. Again, very formal style, but you might see it, you might want to use it in your essays or whatever. "Should you need any help, don't hesitate to call." What does this mean? "Should you need", if you need. "Should" is just a more formal way to say: "if". "If you need any help, don't hesitate to call.", "Should you need any help, don't hesitate to call." Now, this is a verb, subject, verb. If we use: "if", then there's no issue. Then you have "if" which is a conjunction, adverb, clause, conjunction, subject, verb. "Should" makes it verb, subject, verb. "Had" is the same thing with the "if", but a different structure of the conditional, a different "if" structure. "Had I known you were coming, I would have changed." "If I had known", "If I had known you were coming", "Had I known", it's basically you're making the sentence a little bit shorter, a little more formal. You're starting with a verb, a subject, and another verb. Okay? Past perfect, of course. So these are the conditionals, these are the no's. Now, we have the comparatives, when you're comparing something. When you're comparing an action, so you're using the clause marker: "as", not the preposition: "like". So: "John speaks Chinese, as does Lucy." Okay? "Lucy" is actually the subject, here's the verb, here's a subject. Now, I could put a period and put a new sentence. "So does Lucy." Same idea. "Lucy does as well." If I want the subject, verb order. But when you start with "as", you're going to invert the order. This is a clause marker, adverb clause marker to compare.