inversion?
English translation: Inversion is a correct option
| 12:40 Aug 5, 2008 |
| English language (monolingual) [PRO] Journalism | |||||||
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|  Selected response from: Noni Gilbert Riley Spain Local time: 06:42 | ||||||
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| SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED | ||||
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| 5 +1 | Inversion is a correct option |
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| 5 | neither |
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| 4 +1 | Lttle or nothing was something worth |
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| 5 | little or nothing |
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| Discussion entries: 2 | |
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Answers
9 mins confidence: 
neither Explanation: Something was worth little to nothing. As a U.S. English native speaker, "little or nothing" sounds wrong to me. Neither of the sentences you provide in your question sound like proper English to me, so your question may be moot. What was it worth? Little to nothing. What did it cost? Little to nothing. The object cost little to nothing. You must start a complete sentence with the subject, followed by the verb, in almost all cases. Hope this helps! |
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11 mins confidence: 
peer agreement (net): +1
peer agreement (net): +1Lttle or nothing was something worth Explanation: Don't ask me why, I just feel instinctively that this version is acceptable and the other is not. I can see no reason to use inversion here, unless it is to compose a line of a poem in a regular metre. |
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1 hr confidence:
little or nothing Explanation: If you go to the British Corpus and search, there are many hits on "little or nothing", and the phrase is shown in context, so the word order is apparent. The phrase is used as a noun (subject, object, object of the preposition) in the usual word order. This free source is the easiest one I have in my Bookmarks, and being based in Brit. Eng. doesn't seem a difficulty. There are also searchable corpora in American English. Don't invert word order just because you see "but"! -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 1 hr (2008-08-05 13:52:48 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- Oops. Didn't add the orginal sentence as I think it should read: The something was worth little or nothing. There was little or no value to the something (to someone) His something, of little or no value, was included in the report, nevertheless. Example sentence(s):
Reference: http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html |
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2 hrs confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
peer agreement (net): +1Inversion is a correct option Explanation: "Little or nothing" amounts to an adverbial with negative implication and as such can be placed at the start of the sentence. And if the adverbial is set in that position, inversion then takes place. Therefore the two sentences "Little or nothing did something cost. Little or nothing was something worth." are correct grammatically. Inversion with a normal verb requires the inclusion of the auxiliary - in this case "did" to indicate the past (it works like the interrogative form). And in the case of the verb "to be", straightforward inversion of subject and verb is all that is needed. More straightforward examples might be: "Never had I seen such a bad performance" "Hardly ever had she been so frightened" (but notice this: "hardly anyone had come to the meeting" - no inversion because "hardly anyone" is not performing an adverbial function) "Rarely were the sisters to be found apart" etc. Placing the adverbial at the start of the sentence makes it sound formal/literary - and probably British. If you don't want to get that effect, just use the normal word order: Something cost little or nothing. Something was worth little or nothing. Hope this clarifies for you! |
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