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In linguistics, negative inversion is one of many types of subject-auxiliary inversion in English. A negation (e.g. ''not'', ''no'', ''never'', ''nothing'', etc.) or a word that implies negation (''only'', ''hardly'', ''scarcely'') or a phrase containing one of these words precedes the finite auxiliary verb necessitating that the subject and finite verb undergo inversion.〔Negative inversion is explored directly by, for instance, Rudanko (1982), Haegemann (2000), Kato (2000), Sobin (2003), Büring (2004).〕 Negative inversion is a phenomenon of English syntax. The V2 word order of the other Germanic languages (other than English) does not allow one to acknowledge negative inversion as a specific phenomenon, since the V2 principle of those languages, which is mostly absent from English, allows inversion to occur much more broadly than in English. While negative inversion is a common occurrence in English, a solid understanding of just what elicits the inversion has not yet been established. It is, namely, not entirely clear why certain fronted expressions containing a negation elicit negative inversion, but others do not. As with subject-auxiliary inversion in general, negative inversion results in a discontinuity and is therefore a problem for theories of syntax. This problem exist both for the relatively layered structures of phrase structure grammars as well as for the flatter structures of dependency grammars. ==Basic examples== Negative inversion is illustrated with the following b-sentences. The relevant expression containing the negation is underlined and the subject and finite verb are bolded: ::a. Sam will relax at no time. ::b. At no time will Sam relax. - Negative inversion ::a. Jim has never tried that. ::b. Never has Jim tried that. - Negative inversion ::a. He would do a keg stand at no party. ::b. At no party would he do a keg stand. - Negative inversion When the phrase containing the negation appears in its canonical position to the right of the verb, standard subject-auxiliary word order obtains. When this phrase is fronted however, as in the b-sentences, subject-auxiliary inversion, i.e. negative inversion, must occur. If negative inversion does not occur in such cases, the sentence is bad, as the following c-sentences illustrate: ::c. *At no time, Sam will relax. - Sentence is bad because negative inversion has not occurred. ::d. At some time, Sam will relax. - Sentence is fine because there is no negation requiring inversion to occur. ::c. *Never Jim has tried that. - Sentence is bad because negative inversion has not occurred. ::d. Perhaps Jim has tried that. - Sentence is fine because there is no negation requiring inversion to occur ::c. *At no party, he would do a keg stand. - Sentence is bad because negative inversion has not occurred. ::d. At any party, he would do a keg stand. - Sentence is fine because there is no negation requiring inversion to occur. The c-sentences are bad because the fronted phrase containing the negation requires inversion to occur. In contrast, the d-sentences are fine because there is no negation present requiring negative inversion to occur. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Negative inversion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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