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meangradin
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
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 Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:18 pm Post subject: Grammar question |
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"Scarcely a day passes without (Tom) seeing a traffic accident"
When I start a sentence with an adverb, does the subject have to follow? I believe I could place an aux. verb such as "does" after the adverb, then the subject (of course, changing the main verb to the bare infinitive form - "pass").
Can I also place the main verb after the adverb? eg. "Scarcely passes a day with out Tom seeing a trafiic accident."
The latter seems awkward to me.
Why do Korean grammar books have to be so complicated? Personally, I don't think think middle school grammar books should teach this structure as it is to complicated.
Does anyone know the rules that apply?
Thanks,
Craig |
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Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:33 pm Post subject: Re: Grammar question |
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| meangradin wrote: |
"Scarcely a day passes without (Tom) seeing a traffic accident"
When I start a sentence with an adverb, does the subject have to follow? I believe I could place an aux. verb such as "does" after the adverb, then the subject (of course, changing the main verb to the bare infinitive form - "pass").
Can I also place the main verb after the adverb? eg. "Scarcely passes a day with out Tom seeing a trafiic accident."
The latter seems awkward to me.
Why do Korean grammar books have to be so complicated? Personally, I don't think think middle school grammar books should teach this structure as it is to complicated.
Does anyone know the rules that apply?
Thanks,
Craig |
Negative adverbs of frequency (e.g., never, rarely, seldom, scarcely (ever), hardly ever) can be placed in sentence initial position with inversion of the auxiliary verb (inserting 'do', if necessary) and the subject. See pages 506-507 of M. Celce-Murcia and D. Larsen-Freeman's The Grammar Book (2nd Ed.).
I agree with you that this should not be part of the middle school language curriculum. |
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