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I'm guessing the sentence they wrote is just a consequence of English not being the author's primary language. I frequently see ESL speakers get adjective and a

I'm guessing the sentence they wrote is just a consequence of English not being the author's primary language. I frequently see ESL speakers get adjective and adverb positions wrong in ways that unintentially change the meaning. Even skilled English speakers make mistakes here because English is both very permissive about word order, but also tends to give different shades of meaning to each other. "Only" is a pernicious one. When I got my last book copyedited, fixing the location of "only" was one of the most common changes.

jzwinck 5y ago
There is a real parallel between this mistake and the or() mistake. As a native English speaker I glossed over both of them at the first reading.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> When I got my last book copyedited, fixing the location of "only" was one of the most common changes. I remember a puzzle which presented a (fairly long) sentence and asked "provide a word that can be correctly inserted at any point in this sentence". The answer was "only". (Of course the meaning would change according to where the "only" was placed, but still... you'd have a hard time inserting "experience" at every position of a sentence.)
- JimDabell 5y ago
  In case anybody is wondering, the sentence normally given as an example of this is “She told him that she loved him”. You can put the word “only” anywhere in that sentence and each position makes the sentence mean something different.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    As a technicality, while it's possible for "she only told him that she loved him" and "she told him only that she loved him" to mean different things, it's also possible for them to mean the same thing. (And in fact, the primary meaning of the first sentence is the one identical to the meaning of the second - you can read it "she only told him that she loved him [and she didn't do anything else]", but by default you'll read it "she only told him that she loved him [and she didn't tell him anything else]".) The reason for the ambiguity is that the verb is the head of the sentence, and so an "only" placed to scope over the verb has several different options for where the scope "really is".
philwelch 5y ago
It’s kind of like the saying, “all that glitters is not gold”. Gold doesn’t glitter? That makes no sense. English syntax is not mathematical logic. The song, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is not a song about someone who is forced to receive satisfaction.
- cobaltoxide 5y ago
  I guess Shakespeare did write it that way, but I've always heard the saying as "Not all that glitters is gold." Perhaps he took some poetic license at the expense of logical correctness.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Shakespeare […] Perhaps he took some poetic license That was kind of his thing, when he wasn’t just inventing words to fit rhyme/meter/mood. He’s not who you would go to if you wanted unambiguous documentation of the guarantees you were providing downstream users, that wasn’t really his thing.
- derefr 5y ago
  A lot of the confusion in English can be relieved, sometimes, by flipping clauses around. “All that glitters / is not / gold” ⇒ “gold / is not / all that glitters.”
- dagmx 5y ago
  Somewhat related to your points of music... There's an episode of "This is Pop!" on Netflix that explores why the Swedes write so many pop hits. One of the arguments presented is that they speak English well as a second/third language so they're less focused on the lyrics making sense and being grammatically correct, and are free to make lyrics that sound like they work but are non-sensical on reflection. It's just the right amount of separation from the language. Ever since I saw that, I've been listening closer to a lot of the top pop songs over the last decade, and it's fascinating how English is so breakable while sounding right to our mind, but falls apart under scrutiny. (Obviously this is not unique to the swedish writers, even people who only speak English do it as well)
egeozcan 5y ago
Reminds me the "any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car" clause in the Formula 1 racing regulations (article 48.12), which got a lot of attention after the last race in the season. Red Bull Racing argued that in that sentence "any" doesn't mean "all". As a non-native speaker, this is just mind games for me. More reading: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/580131/does-any-necessarily-mean-all-when-speaking-of-a-requirement https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/580131/does-any-... If you really have a lot of free time, interest in regulations, F1 AND the English language, this deep dive can also be interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/rkv633/unpacking_the_stewards_decision_dismissing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/rkv633/unpacki...
- BucketsMcG 5y ago
  I'm a native English speaker with a degree in linguistics, but I didn't appreciate how hard "some/any" are for native speakers until a Polish colleague asked me to explain it, and I pretty much failed. It's something you learn how to do intuitively, but when you try to formulate a consistent set of rules explaining why you choose one over the other, it turns out to be pretty difficult.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
    A decent amount of English is full of inconsistencies like this. Every language has its warts, of course, but like you I never really realized how difficult English is as a language until asked to explain certain behaviors to non-native speakers.

jzwinck 5y ago

There is a real parallel between this mistake and the or() mistake. As a native English speaker I glossed over both of them at the first reading.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> When I got my last book copyedited, fixing the location of "only" was one of the most common changes. I remember a puzzle which presented a (fairly long) sentence and asked "provide a word that can be correctly inserted at any point in this sentence". The answer was "only". (Of course the meaning would change according to where the "only" was placed, but still... you'd have a hard time inserting "experience" at every position of a sentence.)

JimDabell 5y ago
In case anybody is wondering, the sentence normally given as an example of this is “She told him that she loved him”. You can put the word “only” anywhere in that sentence and each position makes the sentence mean something different.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  As a technicality, while it's possible for "she only told him that she loved him" and "she told him only that she loved him" to mean different things, it's also possible for them to mean the same thing. (And in fact, the primary meaning of the first sentence is the one identical to the meaning of the second - you can read it "she only told him that she loved him [and she didn't do anything else]", but by default you'll read it "she only told him that she loved him [and she didn't tell him anything else]".) The reason for the ambiguity is that the verb is the head of the sentence, and so an "only" placed to scope over the verb has several different options for where the scope "really is".

philwelch 5y ago

It’s kind of like the saying, “all that glitters is not gold”. Gold doesn’t glitter? That makes no sense. English syntax is not mathematical logic. The song, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is not a song about someone who is forced to receive satisfaction.

cobaltoxide 5y ago
I guess Shakespeare did write it that way, but I've always heard the saying as "Not all that glitters is gold." Perhaps he took some poetic license at the expense of logical correctness.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Shakespeare […] Perhaps he took some poetic license That was kind of his thing, when he wasn’t just inventing words to fit rhyme/meter/mood. He’s not who you would go to if you wanted unambiguous documentation of the guarantees you were providing downstream users, that wasn’t really his thing.
derefr 5y ago
A lot of the confusion in English can be relieved, sometimes, by flipping clauses around. “All that glitters / is not / gold” ⇒ “gold / is not / all that glitters.”
dagmx 5y ago
Somewhat related to your points of music... There's an episode of "This is Pop!" on Netflix that explores why the Swedes write so many pop hits. One of the arguments presented is that they speak English well as a second/third language so they're less focused on the lyrics making sense and being grammatically correct, and are free to make lyrics that sound like they work but are non-sensical on reflection. It's just the right amount of separation from the language. Ever since I saw that, I've been listening closer to a lot of the top pop songs over the last decade, and it's fascinating how English is so breakable while sounding right to our mind, but falls apart under scrutiny. (Obviously this is not unique to the swedish writers, even people who only speak English do it as well)

egeozcan 5y ago

Reminds me the "any cars that have been lapped by the leader will be required to pass the cars on the lead lap and the safety car" clause in the Formula 1 racing regulations (article 48.12), which got a lot of attention after the last race in the season. Red Bull Racing argued that in that sentence "any" doesn't mean "all". As a non-native speaker, this is just mind games for me. More reading: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/580131/does-any-necessarily-mean-all-when-speaking-of-a-requirement https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/580131/does-any-... If you really have a lot of free time, interest in regulations, F1 AND the English language, this deep dive can also be interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/rkv633/unpacking_the_stewards_decision_dismissing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/F1Technical/comments/rkv633/unpacki...

BucketsMcG 5y ago
I'm a native English speaker with a degree in linguistics, but I didn't appreciate how hard "some/any" are for native speakers until a Polish colleague asked me to explain it, and I pretty much failed. It's something you learn how to do intuitively, but when you try to formulate a consistent set of rules explaining why you choose one over the other, it turns out to be pretty difficult.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
  A decent amount of English is full of inconsistencies like this. Every language has its warts, of course, but like you I never really realized how difficult English is as a language until asked to explain certain behaviors to non-native speakers.