question about 'ONLY'
news.hanafos.com
Today, I and one of friends showed different interpretation of a sentence
when we were reading an article.
The related sentence is as following:
-------------------
This can ONLY benefit the current certified work force that, in taking
advantage of this shortage,
can help alleviate some of its more dramatic impacts, at least in the short
term.
-------------------
I thought that certified work force would get ONLY benefit from the
shortage,
without any disadvantages from that shortage.
But my friend thought that ONLY certified work force would get benefit,
without any other person getting advantages from the shortage
Who is right? Me or my friend?
Raymond S. Wise
My guess is that you are both wrong, that the sense intended is a third
one, with "only" being used as in the following definition from the
*Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary*:
>From the entry for "only" as an adverb:
"*2 :* at the very least <it was _only_ too true>"
In other words, "only" is being used not to signal a restriction on
those who will benefit, but instead to emphasize that there will, in
fact, be a benefit.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Claude Weil
Raymond S. Wise has already given his point of view. As for me,
I should like to point out the differences in sense brought about by
putting "only" at various places in a sentence. Let's take the
sentence " She told me that she loved me" and experiment.
Here are the possible variants:
Only she told me that she loved me
She only told me that she loved me
She told only me that she loved me
She told me only that she loved me
She told me that only she loved me
She told me that she only loved me
She told me that she loved only me
You will necessarily see the differences in sense.
Not seldom, one encounters sentences such as "He only died last week"
and wonders what else he was expected to do in addition. The fact is
that the sentence should read "He died only last week".
CW
John O'Flaherty
I agree with the sense that you read, but I would appeal to AHD," 2b.
And nothing else or more", rather than the exact sense you cited. It
can only benefit, not harm the workforce. The rest of the sentence
doesn't coalesce for me.
--
john
bayskater
Nicely put.
How about "She told me that she loved me only"
Fred
J. W. Love
Neither of you, as others have pointed out. What you're missing,
though, is that the sentence goes haywire after the word <force>. Do
you get any meaning out of it?
R H Draney
>
>>
>> Here are the possible variants:
>>
>> Only she told me that she loved me
>> She only told me that she loved me
>> She told only me that she loved me
>> She told me only that she loved me
>> She told me that only she loved me
>> She told me that she only loved me
>> She told me that she loved only me
>
Oh, great...now that they've started singing we'll *never* get 'em to leave....r
John Lawler
>"news.hanafos.com" <zyuu...@naver.com> writes:
>>Today, I and one of friends showed different interpretation of a sentence
>>when we were reading an article.
>>The related sentence is as following:
>>-------------------
>>This can ONLY benefit the current certified work force that, in taking
>>advantage of this shortage,
>>can help alleviate some of its more dramatic impacts, at least in the short
>>term.
>>-------------------
A terribly ugly sentence. No wonder you were confused.
>>I thought that certified work force would get ONLY benefit from the
>>shortage,
>>without any disadvantages from that shortage.
>>But my friend thought that ONLY certified work force would get benefit,
>>without any other person getting advantages from the shortage
>>Who is right? Me or my friend?
This is the right question. And you're wrong.
You're looking for the focus of "only" and in
this case it's clearly either the noun phrase
"the certified work force" or some word in it
(most likely "certified").
"Only" is the kind of word that is bound to another word, what's called its
'focus'. "Only" can appear in many positions, and is not always close to
its focus. But usually the focus gets contrastive stress (symbolized by
CAPITAL letters below), so it's clear in speech (the sentences below are
derived from the ones posted originally by Claude Weil):
She only TOLD me that she loved me
She only told ME that she loved me
She only told me that SHE loved me
She only told me that she LOVED me
She only told me that she loved ME
That's because the normal rule for placement is to put "only" right before
its focus, or else right before a constituent (here, the Verb Phrase "told
me that she loved me") that contains the focus. If you put the "only" right
before "she" or "me", that's the only word that can be focus; but if you put
it at the beginning of a constituent, any noun, adjective, or verb in the
constituent can be focus. That's ambiguous in writing, since we don't
usually indicate contrastive stress (on Usenet, that's *contrastive*
stress).
-John Lawler http://www.umich.edu/~jlawler Michigan Linguistics
----------------------------------------------------------------
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found
truth without it." -- G.K. Chesterton
Alan
"John Lawler" <jla...@umich.edu> wrote in message
news:XQ_sf.2481$yb2...@news.itd.umich.edu...
Although I agree that it is, indeed, a "terribly ugly sentence", I disagree
with your analysis of its meaning.
First of all, consideration of "contrastive stress" in speech is not
relevant to the discussion. The sentence in question was written, not
spoken.
Secondly, since (as you stated) "the normal rule for placement is to put
'only' right before its focus", one would assume the "focus" to be the verb
"benefit". There is nothing to "clearly" indicate that the noun phrase is
the focus. If that were the case, the sentence would have been written as:
"This can benefit ONLY the current certified work force . . . ".
An example which would be more to the point would be the following:
1. Only she loves me. (nobody else does) {focus: "she"}
2. She only loves me. (she doesn't respect me, she only loves me) {focus:
"loves"}
3. She loves only me. (and nobody else) {focus: "me"}
Claude is right, his friend is wrong.
Mark Brader
> She only TOLD me that she loved me
> She only told ME that she loved me
> She only told me that SHE loved me
> She only told me that she LOVED me
> She only told me that she loved ME
John, you missed one!
She only told me THAT she loved me
(She didn't tell me how much, or since when.)
--
Mark Brader | "But [he] had already established his own reputation
Toronto | as someone who wrote poetry that mentioned the el."
m...@vex.net | --Al Kriman