I was reading a column by Charles Krauthammer yesterday, and read this sentence:
Not once but twice (Afghanistan and then Iraq) did Bush seek and receive congressional authorization, as his father did for the Gulf War.
One peculiarity of English syntax is that the same subject-auxiliary inversion that we associate with questions (e.g. What will you say? instead of *What you will say?) is also mandatory in sentences beginning with a negative adverb, or a fronted negative quantifier. For example:
- Not only should you say thanks in person; you should also send a thank-you note.
- Never have I been so insulted!
- Not once has she said hi to me.
- Not a drop did he touch.
It also happens with what CGEL calls approximate negators, like these:
- Rarely/seldom do they see the light of day.
- Little does he know that…
- Scarcely a bite did he swallow.
And also with adverbs or quantifiers that emphasize the limitation of some action:
- Only then will we grant you permission.
- Only seven seeds did she eat.
Now, back to Krauthammer’s sentence. The adverb phrase not once is interesting. Taken literally, it could refer to a number of times less than one (i.e. zero), or greater than one. In practice, however, it always means “zero times, never”; in other words, it’s understood as “not even once.” As such, it triggers the inversion I’ve been talking about. So if the sentence had started off with not once, without the but twice–
Not once did Bush seek and receive congressional authorization.
–it would have been grammatical (although false).
What about the phrase not once but twice? That’s not a negative adverbial. Krauthammer’s not saying George W. Bush never asked for congressional authorization for a war; he’s saying Bush did it twice. For that reason, I wouldn’t expect the inversion. Also, there’s a syntactic difference between not once and not once but twice that shows how not once but twice patterns with ordinary adverbs, and not with negative ones: Of the two, only not once but twice can go at the end of a sentence:
*Bush sought congressional authorization {not once, not, never}. [Although at no time does work.]
Bush sought congressional authorization {not once but twice, sometimes, many times}.
So that’s why Not once did Bush seek congressional authorization sounds fine to me, but Not once but twice did Bush seek congressional authorization is surprising. However, I did some Googling, and found some other examples of not once but twice followed by an inverted subject and auxiliary:
- NOT ONCE BUT TWICE did gold demonstrate a classic failure (link)
- Not once, but twice did the coaster gods have it out for him. (<a href="link)
- Not once, but twice did he come out into the crowd to play…. (link)
- Not once, but twice was Kobe Bryant publicly asked for a comment regarding Mike Brown’s hire as Lakers coach. (link)
- Not once but twice have you linked to a @joshgarrels interview that does not (yet) exist. (link)
- Not once but twice was Robert Evans picked, seemingly off the street by Norma Shearer and Darryl Zanuck no less, to act in blockbuster movies. (link)
- Not once but twice will it send its arrows. (link)
Indeed, not once, but twice did my gaze hold too high for my feet to follow safe motions, and a trip or two resulted. (link)
Not once but twice did Rageh Al-Murisi try to get into the cockpit while the plane descended for a landing while shouting Allahu Akbar. (link)
Searching for examples of not once but twice without inversion was more difficult, since you don’t know how long the subject NP might be. On the Corpus of Contemporary English, I tried searching for not once but twice followed by a proper noun, or just the word the. No results. If you find such a sentence, i.e. something like
Not once but twice, Bush sought and received congressional authorization.
please tell us about it in the comments. Also, how do the examples of not once but twice with inversion sound to you?
