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  1. Only after reading it carefully several times did I begin to make sense of the poem.

  2. Only after reading it carefully several times I began making sense of the poem.

I know that the first one is correct but I do not understand why. Other than sounding strange, why is the second one incorrect? Thank you very much!

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    No. 1 is grammatical, 2 is ungrammatical. When a negative adverbial phrase (only is a negative trigger) of the right kind is preposed, the sentence undergoes subject-auxiliary inversion, if the negative scope extends to it. Since you hadn't begun to make sense of it until after reading it several times (that's the scope of only, extending to the clause), the inversion is obligatory. Oh, and, by the way, "ungrammatical" means "sounding strange to a syntactically trained native speaker".
    – John Lawler
    Commented Sep 1, 2014 at 18:56
  • This question has been asked, and answered, 20+ times by now. Please use the site search before asking.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Sep 1, 2014 at 20:15

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