Teacher Discussion Forums

Although I've been teaching beginner-to-intermediate for 12 years, I've got a group of advanced students for the first time (using Headway Advanced and Round-Up 6), and a grammar question came up that I couldn't (gasp!) answer.
Is there a rule for subject-verb inversion for emphatic sentences such as "Never have I been so insulted in all my life!"? My students are very curious, as am I, because I can't find anything in all the rules I know to explain this one.
I'll be grateful if any advanced teachers have a clue on this one!

Simply put, the auxiliary has to be the second block of a negative or restrictive sentence. This is normally achieved by having the subject as the first block:

I have never seen such a ridiculous film.

You can choose to "front" the adverb but this involves a bit of shuffling:

Never have I seen such a ridiculous film.

Sometimes there isn't an auxiliary:

You rarely ..........

So we use "do":

Rarely do you.......

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/ ... ion01.html

andl the links that work should explain the whole phenomenon of "fronting".

Questions are fronted, "So do I" as well. Passives are part of the same thing. If you get interested, google "fronting negative inversion" and stand well back.

Thanks a lot!
I'd noticed the negative adv. thing, but it wasn't exclusive to that, so I didn't know how to explain it.