exclamation (inversion)

[Sitifan]

1. How much greater is our God than our greatest need!
2. How much greater our God is than our greatest need!
3. How cold is it!
4. How cold it is!
5. How much greater is our God!
6. How much greater our God is!

Which of the above sentences is NOT correct?
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Thank you very much for your reply.

[Mister Micawber]

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First, what are your choices?
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Canadian-American native speaker
who teaches English for a living at Mister Micawber's
ESL cafe: Interview with Mr. Micawber

[Alan]

Hi,

They can all be justified as acceptable in different ways. The only sore thumb sticking out is possibly: How cold is it. This could be a question if it had a question mark. If it doesn't have a question mark, then to me it has a very Jewish flavour and intonation.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Start or begin?

[Molly]

[Sitifan]

[Yankee]

Hi Sitifan

Since your sentences are not actually intended as questions (but rather as exclamations), my first reaction would be to choose 2, 4, and 6. However, I can easily imagine any of the 6 being used.
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Amy
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ESL teacher, and native speaker of American English

[Sitifan]

I think that the structure in 1, 3, 5 are suitable for questions. As for exclamations, no inversion is needed, so 2, 4, and 6 are correct.
Would you please make any more comment, Yankee? Thank you in advance.
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Thank you very much for your reply.

[Yankee]

Hi Sitifan

Any of your six sentences can be used as exclamations. I'm not sure whether I can really help you much more, but here are some thoughts:

4. How cold it is!
Let's look at sentence 4 first.
Without the word "how", a normal affirmative sentence would be "It is cold".
The word "how" can be used at the beginning of a sentence as an intensifier. If something other than the verb is intensified, that element of the predicate must be fronted and paired with "how". In sentence 4 the word "cold" is fronted, the word "how" is an intensifier (it basically intensifies "cold" so that it means "very cold"), and subject-verb inversion is not necessary.

This might be compared to the sort of fronting found in simple, everyday expressions such as "Here it is" and "There he goes". It is also normal to hear people use sentences such as "How it poured!" or "How we laughed!" or even "How hard we laughed!"

3. How cold is it!
Basically, though, when part of a predicate is placed in the initial position, it is not uncommon to invert the subject and verb. However, it may simply be the case that this does not always work very well when the sentence is very simple and it's an everyday sentence (i.e. not literary). Nevertheless, people do use a sentence such as 3 occasionally as an exclamatory sentence.

6. How much greater our God is!
Sentence 6 is like sentence 4.
The word "how" intensifies "much greater".

5. How much greater is our God!
Sentence 5 also works with subject-verb inversion. To me, this sentence sounds a little more literary than sentence 6, and I would say that subject-verb inversion is more likely when a comparative or superlative is fronted.

1. How much greater is our God than our greatest need!
In my opinion, sentence 1 works the best with inversion not only because a comparative is fronted, but also because of the word "than". Inversion creates a nice balance in the sentence: "...our God than our greatest need":

2. How much greater our God is than our greatest need!
In sentence 2, the lack of inversion tends to make the sentence sound a little more choppy. The word "is" interrupts the balance.

Those are my thoughts. I hope they help.
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Amy
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ESL teacher, and native speaker of American English