Hi, Dallas!  Recently you wrote in a message to ANTON SHEPELEV:

AS>  Only at night do bats leave their caves...

AS>  Does "only" really require inversion here?

DH>  It seems to me that "only" HAS to be next to "at night".


            Yes, unless bats do nothing after leaving their homes.  AFAIK
they sleep in barns, caves, or whatever & go out at night to hunt for
food....  :-)



DH>  You might "invert" the sentence to say:

DH>  Bats leave their caves only at night

DH>  But that's a more clumsy way of saying it, to my mind!


            Grammatically it's correct; stylistically it's weak.  I
understand that in languages such as Latin, German, and Russian the verb is
placed at the end of the sentence.  In English we resort to other means to
keep the audience awake until we've finished saying our bit.  That's where
style comes in.  :-))




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+