Location of only

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hello,

I wonder the differences between two sentences below:

  1. When my mother met the doctor in England, my father had only been dead for one year.
  2. When my mother met the doctor in England, my father had been dead for only one year.

The first one sounds more natural to me and I don’t know why. Should I say the second one “…my father had been dead for one year only”? I don’t know how the location of “only” affect the meaning of the sentences. What’s the difference?

Thank you in advance,
sweetpumpkin

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The meaning is the same. But I agree that the first one sounds more natural and is the way most people would say it.

It might be argued that the placement of adjectives changes the emphasis slightly, but in this case I don’t think it makes a difference.

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@Sweetpumpkin , if this is the type of questions you have, then you should be teaching the English course.

To me, there is a difference in emphasis, or at least the possibility of a difference. If the words you want to emphasize are “only” and “one year”, then the emphasis is stronger if they’re together.

If I were not looking for emphasis, I would probably go with
“…my father had only been dead for a year.”

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