{"id":2990,"date":"2016-03-15T09:45:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T16:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/toefl\/?p=2990"},"modified":"2016-03-15T09:45:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T16:45:42","slug":"toefl-tuesday-subject-verb-inversions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/toefl\/toefl-tuesday-subject-verb-inversions\/","title":{"rendered":"TOEFL Tuesday: Subject\u2013Verb Inversions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This week\u2019s TOEFL Tuesday video is about a pretty advanced grammar topic. If you don\u2019t know what \u201cinversions\u201d are, don\u2019t worry\u2014I\u2019ll explain it. But first, for context, remember that the TOEFL is made of both conversational and academic English. Sometimes you listen to lectures or read passages from textbooks. At other points, you listen to students in conversation, using less formal English. The inversions I talk about below are mostly from the academic material, because they are a bit formal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"TOEFL Tuesday: Grammar - Subject Verb Inversions\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rsQfzZRSTSc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That said, the best way to introduce inversions is with a structure that\u2019s really not formal at all. Let\u2019s look at a simple question:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i>Did<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> you <\/span><\/i><b><i>go<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the store?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Notice the word \u201cdid\u201d before the subject, \u201cyou.\u201d That\u2019s interesting, because in a normal English sentence, the verb and all of its helping (auxiliary) verbs come <\/span><b>after<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the subject, as in this normal statement:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You <\/span><\/i><b><i>didn\u2019t go<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the store.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we put the helping verb before the subject, that\u2019s an inversion. Questions are the most common inversions. We also invert in the common, conversational phrases \u201cSo <\/span><b>do<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I<\/span><b>\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and \u201cNeither <\/span><b>do <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But as I promised, let\u2019s look at some more advanced, academic inversions.<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp; <\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hypotheticals with inversions<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we talk about hypothetical situations, we normally use the word \u201cif\u201d and a past tense, plus a \u201cwould\u201d phrase. For example, you could say \u201cIf I had more time, I\u2019d study Mandarin,\u201d or \u201cIf I \u00a0hadn\u2019t gone to college, I wouldn\u2019t have met Jeremy.\u201d (If you like naming grammar structures, these are the 2nd and 3rd conditionals.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those structures tell us the sentence is about an <\/span><b>imaginary<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> situation. It\u2019s not real. In those examples, the truth is that I <\/span><b>don\u2019t<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have time, and that I <\/span><b>did<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> go to college.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But if we want to sound more formal, we remove the \u201cif\u201d and invert to get the same meaning. We can say \u201c<\/span><b>Had I not gone<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to college\u2026\u201d instead of \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t gone to college\u2026.\u201d \u00a0This is most common with the third conditional, about an imaginary past. Inverting the second conditional, as in \u201chad I more time\u2026,\u201d is possible but sounds old and overly formal. We almost never do that in modern English<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So for the TOEFL, it\u2019s more important to learn that third conditional inversion: \u201cHad [subject] [main verb],&#8230;\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Negative adverbials<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes, a sentence starts with an adverbial phrase\u2014a modifier for the main verb of the sentence. For example, I could say \u201cDuring the fall, brown bears hunt salmon.\u201d In that sentence, \u201cduring the winter\u201d is an adverbial phrase that modifies \u201csleep.\u201d It explains more about the sleep\u2014specifically, <\/span><b>when<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> they sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If we use the word \u201conly\u201d in an adverbial phrase, it becomes negative. \u201cOnly during the fall&#8230;\u201d has a negative feeling, because it implies that in the other months, brown bears DON\u2019T hunt salmon. But it also makes an inversion happen. In that sentence, the helping verb \u201cdo\u201d would move before the subject \u201cbrown bears:\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only during the fall do brown bears hunt salmon.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are many negative adverbial phrases you can make with the word only, and inversions are generally possible or standard. Here are more examples:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not only<\/span><\/i><b><i> was<\/i><\/b> <b><i>it raining<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it was cold.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only rarely <\/span><\/i><b><i>do<\/i><\/b> <b><i>sharks prey<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on humans<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But notice that the \u201conly\u201d phrase in that example above is modifying the verb prey. That\u2019s very different from \u201conly\u201d as an adjective. In the sentence \u201conly sharks are dangerous here,\u201d for example, there is no inversion because \u201conly\u201d modifies the noun \u201csharks.\u201d It is an <\/span><b>adjective<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, not an adverb. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Other Inversions<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There actually are several other reasons that inversions happen, but the two types above are the most important in normal, advanced English. Many other reasons are too old-fashioned to be useful, and some (like the question form) are so common that you probably already know them well!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So if you understand the negative-adverbial inversions and the hypothetical inversions above, you know the big stuff!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week\u2019s TOEFL Tuesday video is about a pretty advanced grammar topic. If you don\u2019t know what \u201cinversions\u201d are, don\u2019t worry\u2014I\u2019ll explain it. But first, for context, remember that the TOEFL is made of both conversational and academic English. Sometimes you listen to lectures or read passages from textbooks. At other points, you listen to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13603],"tags":[13621],"ppma_author":[13628],"class_list":["post-2990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","tag-video"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.7 (Yoast SEO v21.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>TOEFL Tuesday: Subject\u2013Verb Inversions - Magoosh Blog \u2013 TOEFL\u00ae\ufe0f Test<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/toefl\/toefl-tuesday-subject-verb-inversions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"TOEFL Tuesday: Subject\u2013Verb Inversions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week\u2019s TOEFL Tuesday video is about a pretty advanced grammar topic. 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