Word order in the context of "Wie Sie sagen"

Question

As a start-at-the-beginning refresher, I am working through translation exercises in "A Complete German course", by Leslie John Russon, a book that I used at high school many years ago. The exercise that I am currently doing is mostly concerned with word order in the presences of various conjunctions rather than a focus on modern German usage etc. The English sentence at issue is:

As you say, I have not worked.

Following the specific advice in the linked instructional section of Russon that, "When the subordinate clause precedes the main clause, the finite verb stands first in the main clause", I translate the sentence as

Wie Sie sagen, habe ich nicht gearbeitet.

It sounds odd to me! I want to say

Wie Sie sagen, ich habe nicht gearbeitet.

I say this as someone whose German was once around B2 level rather than a beginner's level and a search on Google for "Wie Sie sagen" throws up numerous examples where the following clause commences in subject-verb order instead of verb-subject order.

I'd appreciate some guidance as to what is correct.

Answer 1

Wie Sie sagen, habe ich nicht gearbeitet.

is clearly preferable since only with that word order it is one truly transposable compound sentence:

Wie Sie sagen, [so] habe ich nicht gearbeitet.

Ich habe [so], wie Sie sagen, nicht gearbeitet.

Ich habe [so] nicht gearbeitet, wie Sie sagen.

So is the implicit reference point of the relative clause wie Sie sagen.

The reason for that is that the relative clause, when part of the sentence, can occupy the prefield (Vorfeld), that means be the sentence part that comes before the verb in a V2-sentences where the finite verb takes the second position. The Vorfeld, however, may only take one part of the sentence. Thus you simply can't squeeze a subclause and the subject into the Vorfeld.

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[Es ist,] wie Sie sagen: Ich habe nicht gearbeitet.

makes two different main clauses out of those, the first being elliptic. Wie Sie sagen would not longer be part of the sentence Ich habe nicht gearbeitet, but stand on its own.