If only

My proofreader and I have a disagreement. He is right, on a strict reading of the rules, but still I strike out his correction. We are even admonished in the style guide to take care over this particular issue. Still I insist on my usage.

The problem is “only”. Careful editors know that “only” is one of those recurring difficult words in English. Most would agree with the proofreader, I should point out, but the reason I don’t is rather revealing of the difference between prescriptivists and descriptivists, and how they approach language.

A possible sentence in question is: “I am only allowed to go three times a week.” The proofreader would correct this to: “I am allowed to go only three times a week.” I do not know his reasoning (probably blind application of the rule, because if he understood language better, he would be an editor and make more money) but it could be that the former sentence could be taken to be contrastive: “I am only allowed but not forced.”

However, I argue that my usage is correct, idiomatic English. It is exactly equivalent to the latter because in fact the preposition of “only” before the verb does not sever it from the adverbial phrase and make it apply to the verb, any more than moving “up” to the end of the sentence in “Pull the blinds up” changes the meaning of it. (I was thinking of comparing it with “Shut the fuck up” but this is not a good example. One cannot say “Shut up the fuck”. I would argue this is because “shut the fuck up” is a unit, entirely distinct from “shut” and “shut up” both. I don’t know even what these units are called (I’m not particularly well versed in formal grammar). I guess it’s a type of phrasal verb, although it lacks the flexibility of verbs such as “take over”, “put across” and so on, where the object can be interposed. It’s more like “move in on”. (I’m not sure “move in on” even is a phrasal verb. Thinking about it, I brought to mind “run over the field” and “run the dog over”, in which the former uses “over” as a preposition and the latter uses it in a phrasal verb.) I am not anyway comparing the mobility of elements here but rather the idea that elements are connected to one another regardless of their physical proximity.)

Compare “I always go on a Sunday” and “I go always on a Sunday” where the position of the adverb does make a difference. The former means that on each Sunday, I go; the latter that when I go, it is on a Sunday. Only the former tells you that I go every Sunday. The latter is true if I go once a month, once a year or once a decade, so long as when I go, it is on a Sunday.

Look at “I only go on a Sunday” and “I go only on a Sunday” though. Again, you might argue that the former is contrastive (“I only go but do not take part” perhaps) but without a context that makes it so, I believe that that reading simply does not exist in English.

Why am I right?

(It’s quite instructive to look at “mostly”. “I mostly go on Sundays” is equivalent entirely to “I go mostly on Sundays”. One does not read the former as saying “I mostly go but partly do other things on Sunday”.)

Have a look at “I only like her” and “I like only her”. Aha, Dr Zen, the proofreader is thinking. Got you. Clearly these two sentences mean different things! (The former that I like her but don’t love her; the latter that I like her and no one else.) Yes, they do. But neither has an adverbial phrase to which “only” belongs. (Comparing “I only like her” with “I only go on a Sunday” is like comparing “Run up a hill” with “Run up a debt” or, more confusing still, “Run up the flag”. Hell’s teeth! Three “run up”s! Can it be? Well, yes and no. The first is clearly “run” with a preposition “up”. The second is equally clearly a phrasal verb, in which “up” has no independent meaning. But in the third the flag does go “up”. You could say “run the flag up the pole”, couldn’t you? There’s a lesson in there, which is that one should not confuse grammatical terms with realities. In English, prepositions can often work very much as adverbs. “I’m going to Grandma’s.” “Take the pie over with you.” But “up” is not an adverb, a prescriptivist must cry! Yes, dude, it is. I just described a sentence where it is.) I wonder what to make of “I like her only”. It must surely (surely must?) be read as “I like only her”, but why? How does it fit the rule?

Now, the proofreader must say. Yes. Okay. But how about “I only stroke her on Sundays” and “I stroke her only on Sundays”. Surely the former says that you stroke her but don’t poke her, and the latter that you stroke her but not on Mondays.

Well no. Try saying them without conveying your meaning with intonation. If you do not emphasise “stroke” in the first, it does not have the contrastive meaning. Intonation sometimes conveys context in speech.

For further comparison, consider: “Smoking is only permitted in the smoking room.” Surely this must mean it’s permitted but not encouraged? Yes, if it is spoken in reply to “We’re in the smoking room but must we smoke?” But if it is, context has overtaken the idiom. In the same way, imagine this. Three men are in a room. Two are torturing the third, who begins to babble, whine and moan. The first hands a second a gun. “Shut the fuck up,” he says. But he is talking to the second guy, who is not saying anything.

Or this. Two fleas are standing on a flagpole. “Should we run?” says flea one. “Yes,” says number two. “Let’s run up the flag”.

Why did I mention prescriptivists and descriptivists?

It’s simple. The proofreader’s argument rests on making sense out of the sentence – parsing it, if you will, rule by rule, strictly and logically. The rule that he applies is that “only” modifies the word it is closest to. However, this ignores that English is not constructed word by word, any more than any other language is (with the exception of synthetic languages such as Chinese, which is far less permissive of idiomatic readings). It doesn’t always make “sense”. Think about the famous Spanish double negative. Yo no tengo nada means I have nothing, but literally says I not have nothing. Hey, that means you do have something, right? Wrong. The Spanish idiom is to use the negative twice, before and after the verb (the same is true of written French of course).

There is a rule in English that “only” modifies the word it is closest to, but it only applies in some cases (Dr Zen admits to loving self-reference – again that phrase cannot mean it only applies but does not, erm, well, there is no contrastive verb that springs to mind). The prescriptivist wants “only” to follow a narrow rule for adverbs – which applies for example to “simply” in the sentence I used above: “Because the contrastive reading simply is not idiomatic English.” – but ignores that in fact the two “simply”s have quite different meanings! “I’m simply allowed to go three times a week” and “I’m allowed to go simply three times a week” mean different things because in the former “simply” means “emphatically” and in the latter “without adornment”. “Only” does not change meaning – it has the same idea of restriction wherever it is put in the sentence. The prescription that it should modify whatever it is next to is belied by the truth that in the common idiom it does not (okay, I cheated, because the double negative is prescribed in Spanish, but in that instance I was illustrating that language refuses to obey the “rules” of logic). Yes, “I’m only allowed to go three times a week” is strictly incorrect. It could mean that I’m allowed but not forced. But it doesn’t.

At this point, perhaps the proofreader is thinking, But every time you are at variance with the rules, you will cry “idiom” and trump them.

Well, I might reply, this is why good editors are descriptivists to the core. Because you feel that the rules are laid out and the language ought to abide by them, but I am familiar enough with English to know that the rules are simply how it is. (Of course, some are somewhat fixed. The analogy I sometimes use is driving a car. You mostly have to stay on the road and out of the ditch and your motor must be working. Your car must be structurally recognisable as a vehicle. But how you drive is down to you, and where you go, well, the road is open. An understanding that going quickly is more fun than going slowly comes with experience of driving; there is no exhilaration in gridlock (but maybe you can call your mum).) Knowing what is idiomatic is part of what makes an editor. You do not simply learn a set of rules – in spelling, grammar and semantics. No. You learn what English is, how it is used and how it is not.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:40 am