I am having a discussion with my friend. I said, "Many times I have seen him washing his car." He says it should be, "Many times have I seen him washing his car. Much like "Often do I see him", and not "Often I see him."
While I agree with him on 'often,' I am skeptical about 'many times.' I hope somebody can help.
Best Answer
Subject-Auxiliary Inversion (with Do-Support) only happens with some adverbs.
Most adverbs don't indulge.
In particular, neither
*Often do I see him
nor
*Many times have I seen him
are normal colloquial American English.
Adverbs can appear almost anywhere in a sentence, especially its beginning and end
(though different types of adverbs have different affordances),
and they rarely affect the word order of the rest of the sentence, no matter where they wind up.
One place where this does happen, though, is with negative adverbs;
but only with certain kinds of negative adverbs. So,
and
are OK (though they seem rather old-fashioned to some),
but
and
are ungrammatical with inversion, though they're fine without it.