"Not once but twice" triggers subj-aux inversion?

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:41 PM -0400 6/27/11, Neal Whitman wrote:
>>>From Charles Krauthammer's column yesterday:
>
>"Not once but twice (Afghanistan and then Iraq) did Bush seek and receive
>congressional authorization, as his father did for the Gulf War."
>
>Why the subject-auxiliary inversion? With "Not once" I get it, but not with
>"Not once but twice," which isn't a negation of the main verb.
>
>Further discussion and additional attestations on the blog:
>http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/not-once-but-twice/
>
Interesting, Neal.  I share your judgments and your puzzlement about
the (evident) possibility of inversion with "not once but twice",
although I would differ from one of your comments in the blog:  "Not
only" + inverted clausal complement (your example is "Not only should
you say thanks in person; you should also send a thank-you note")
does *not* involve negative inversion.   I've argued for this claim
partly on the basis that it introduces a veridical environment ("not
only p but q" entails p) but mostly on linguistic grounds.  In
particular, no negative polarity items are possible within its scope:

Not only should you (*ever) say thanks in person...
Not only have I (*ever) eaten (*any) shrimp, I've eaten squid.

In fact, "not only" clauses host positive rather than negative
polarity items.  One of my minimal pairs (in a 2000 article on this)
was

Not only does she already love someone else, but she's also married.
*Not only does she love anyone else yet, but she's also married.

In this respect, "not only" differs radically from "only" itself,
which *is* negative in meaning and thus licenses both negative
polarity items and (when fronted) inversion:

Only then/in Japanese restaurants would I ever eat any jellyfish.
Only if you begged me would I lift a finger to help you.
Only God could ever make a tree.

Instead, the inversion with "not only" is related to that in other
cases of backgrounded clauses in correlative constructions, as in:

No sooner had she spoken than down the chimney tumbled two feet from
which the flesh had rotted.  [from _Scary Stories to Tell in the
Dark_]
So tall is he that he can dunk without leaving his feet.

LH

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