On Jun 10, 2020, at 10:08 AM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 6/10/2020 10:04 AM, Will Martin wrote:

It is confusing that English uses “only” sometimes to mean “exclusively”, and other times to mean “merely”, and Okrand chose to use the word “only” instead of sticking to the more specific “exclusively” or “merely”. It means that we can’t be sure whether the canon examples intentionally or accidentally suggest different meaning depending on whether it follows nouns or verbs.

SuStel appropriately assumes it was intentional, since there are apparently no contradictory examples in canon to suggest otherwise, leaving us with a little extra work to do if we want to convey the meaning we don’t have an example for in canon.

No... Okrand says so explicitly in TKD:

Unlike the other adverbials, [neH] follows the verb which it modifies. The semantic effect is one of trivializing the action.

[...]

Also unlike the other adverbials, neH can follow a noun. In such cases, it means only, alone.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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