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

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry, I just don't get it. If someone is trying to say that usually the
> "subj-aux inversion" is associated with negative adverbials, I can buy that.
>
> If someone is trying to say that it is wrong to change word order to make a
> point, to add emphasis, even to just sound poetic (or pretentious), I have
> to disagree. It's is one of the great joys of English that we are not stuck
> with a lot of rules for word order.

I agree.

But we *do* have a lot of rules restricting possible word-order. If we
didn't, then there would be nothing of interest having to do with
word-order. A change in word-order couldn't be emphatic, poetic,
pretentious or whatever, because it's not possible for there to be a
change, unless there's a rules that says, "In general, you can do only
X. For if, instead, you do Y, people are going to consider you to be
pretentiously emphatic, emphatically pretentious, or whatever."

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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