3 ms·
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 th
by 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 agoAs 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".