Why this structure? "By no means do we advocate to invent everything from scratch"

It's a bit of an archaic sentence structure that isn't used much these days and I think that's throwing you off. I don't know how to grammatically describe why it's there but it is correct as originally written. If you wanted to rewrite it without that you would have to reorder the sentence to something like "We by no means advocate..."

It’s inversion. You’ll see it used in phrases like “Under no circumstances should we…”

>"By no means do we advocate to invent everything from scratch" I think it'd be more common to write this as: "By no means do we advocate for inventing everything from scratch."

It's called negative inversion. It's an advanced structure particularly common in journalism.

It's correct as written.  Means the same as:  "We do not advocate to invent everything from scratch" or perhaps "We do not advocate for inventing everything from scratch".  Just a less direct way to say that, which puts a bit of emphasis on different words as a rhetorical device.

To understand what's happening here, drop the "By no means" from the sentence and look at what you have left. It's a question: "Do we advocate to invent everything from scratch?" and the answer is, "By no means." This doesn't work in all cases. It seems to only work if the answer is an adverb or an adverbial phrase, but that might not cover everything. One more thing: If the question has one of the "h/wh" adverbs, it's dropped when constructing a sentence this way. "How did he go to New York?" "By train did he go to New York." This kind of construct is only used in literary and poetic contexts. You would never do this in normal conversation.

By no means is a phrase that necessitates an inversion, manifested in this case as 'do we' as opposed to 'we advocate'

The inversion is correct. It’s actually a vestigial remnant of something called V2 word order, which specifies that the finite (conjugated) verb always has to go in second position in the sentence. This is a thing in most Germanic languages, including German and Dutch, and it was the case in Old English as well. Modern English is for the most part a subject-verb-object (SVO) order language, but this is one of a few leftover constructions that show a V2-like pattern.

It’s a grammatically correct but stylistically terrible sentence. “By no means” is basically superfluous but it inverts the sentence. We can rewrite as: * We **do not** advocate to invent everything from scratch.

It is not a question. "[Under no circumstance] will we advocate to invent everything from scratch." idk how to explain it, but "by no means" will only appear in a answer/response, or as a seperate clause to the question itself. By no means do we advocate for X, but what about Y?

It's correct, although "inventing" would be a better and more natural choice than "to invent".

A lot of Germanic languages have something called V2 word order, where the verb always comes second. English *mostly* lost this, but there are a few times in more formal or literary English where we'll keep it, like after the phrase "by no means"

Happy to be corrected but it should be written: *By no means do we advocate ~~to invent~~ **inventing** everything from scratch*

English isn't my native language. I am just curious who are teaching those horrible ESL English? "By no means do we advocate..."? What a horrible way to say "We don't suggest..." I remember many of my ESL textbooks were horribly written.

It’s a formal inversion. With limiting adverbials: by no means, under no circumstances, only on Wednesdays, hardly … etc. you can invert the subject and first (auxiliary) verb to emphasise the limiting condition. By no means should you press the big red button. Under no circumstances do we refund customers’ deposits. Only on Wednesdays can you wear shorts to work. Hardly had I woken up, when the phone calls started. …

For the sake of completeness, please note: You are in no case obligated to invert your verbs in this fashion. It’s an available choice of style, sometimes a compact and effective one. To avoid inverting the subject/verb order, you need to (a) give the negation function to the main clause instead of the adverbial phrase, or (b) relocate the negative adverbial between the subject and verb. The OP’s example could be rewritten as, “We do not advocate inventing everything from scratch by any means.” Alternatively, “We by no means advocate inventing…” My feeling is that the original inverted form makes the strongest sentence (it is a pretty good example). For another example, “Only on Fridays do we dress casually at work” could as well be “We only dress casually at work on Fridays,” or “We dress casually at work on Fridays only.” This time, the third version is nearest to something I would actually say. “Only on Fridays do we dress…” does not sound like contemporary English.

It's correct as written. The way you're suggesting would be incorrect.

This is probably a hold over from German, where in certain situations the verb comes in second position, before the subject. This only applies to stuff like, "under no circumstances should we...", "by no means should we...", etc.