Learn English – Inversion in “Only when the virus introduces its nucleic acid into a cell does disease occur”

grammaticalitysentence-patternssubject-verb-inversion

Given this sentence,

Disease occurs only when the virus introduces its nucleic acid into a cell.

Is the following inversion grammatical?

→ Only when the virus introduces its nucleic acid into a cell does disease occur.

Especially the "does disease occur" part.

I think that "occurs disease " is right. Can you explain a rule about this kind of sentence?

Best Answer

Your sentence is right.

A simple way of looking at the rule of inversion is thinking about question and sentence patterns in English.

The question pattern is:

Verb (V) + Subject (S) 

Some learners actually misunderstand the meaning of "v." In the same way that these questions are wrong and unacceptable:

Went he to school?

Like you strawberries?

Your alternative is also wrong:

Occurs disease?

I pointed out these things because the pattern for inversion is the same pattern for questions. And this pattern is:

Auxiliary Verb + Subject + Main Verb 

So,

Only when... does disease occur. = OK

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