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While I was listening to a guided meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn (who is a Native English-Speaker) I bumped into an expression that appears to contain a sort of inversion in an affirmative sentence. I've looked it up in the Cambridge Grammar Reference online and it seems this is something not linked to the presence of be likely to.

Only if you know, or even suspect that it actually does, are you likely to have enough energy for the discipline of formal practice.

Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
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Paolo
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    Yes, it is standard in sentences that begin with certain (not all) introductory words or phrases of a negative or restricting quality, like only and never. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica May 04 '17 at 14:36
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    @Janus: I was just about to closevote with "migrate to ELL" as your dup vote appeared, so I endorsed that instead. But looking more closely, I don't see anything either here or on the "original" answers regarding formality. IMHO this specific type of inversion is extremely uncommon in relaxed conversation among speakers who aren't particularly "articulate". So I'd say it's somewhat stylised / poetic / literary. – FumbleFingers May 04 '17 at 14:55
  • I tried my best to find an answer to my question before posting but I wasn't able to find that one. So thank you very much, @JanusBahsJacquet, for linking that post and for adding further information. – Paolo May 04 '17 at 15:05
  • @FumbleFingers You’re right. My comment was too hasty. There are two different inversions here: one for fronted adverbial elements in general, and another for fronted negative or restrictive adverbials in particular (plus the structure ‘so ADV/ADJ’). In the former case, inversion is optional and stylised; in the latter, it is mandatory. “Then came the rain” and “Then the rain came” are both valid, but out of “Not only is it cheap, it’s also bad” and “*Not only it’s cheap, it’s also bad”, only the first is grammatical. When I commented, I was thinking only about the latter type. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 04 '17 at 15:23
  • The inversion is entirely due to the presence of the fronted "only". Inversion occurs in declarative clauses only when certain types of element are put in front position. Negatives are one very obvious type of element that trigger subject-auxiliary inversion when fronted. "Only" is not negative, but it is semantically close to a negative, in that "Only John liked it", for example, entails "No one other than John liked it". – BillJ May 04 '17 at 15:48
  • @Janus: I think BillJ has the right of it flagging up the relevance of "fronted" [not] only. It's not too hard to imagine a street hawker saying My apples are not only cheaper but tastier, but Not only are my apples cheaper, but they're also tastier certainly sounds much more "oratorical, theatrical" to me. – FumbleFingers May 05 '17 at 13:41
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    @FumbleFingers That’s essentially the same thing I was saying: only [adj/adv] is one of those restrictive adverbials that function in the same way as negatives by triggering mandatory inversion. The entire structure may in some cases be stylised, but if you do go with this structure, then the inversion is not stylised, but mandatory. The fronting construction in “never have I heard such nonsense” is more highly marked than that in “I have never heard…”, but inversion is not part of the marking—“never I have heard such nonsense” is simply ungrammatical. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 05 '17 at 14:12
  • @Janus: Gotcha. Your "marked" is definitely a better way of categorising the construction. It's not so much that speakers who aren't particularly "articulate" wouldn't tend to use it - just that such people tend not to use marked forms so often in general (they're more favoured by "careful" speakers who know exactly what nuances can be conveyed by choosing to avoid the more natural phrasing). – FumbleFingers May 05 '17 at 14:48

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