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4.2 Conjunctive Only in PDEHowever, a different sense of conjunctive only is found in the examples in
(4). In these instances the meaning of only is ‘except’ or ‘except that.’ The
clause preceding only always contains a modal; it sets up a hypothetical situ-
ation, which is not fulfi lled because of the conditions described in the only
clause:
(4) a. I would like to come. Only , I have not got the time. (König 1991 : 16)
b. H e ’d succeed, only he’s rather lazy. ( Longman : s.v. only )
c. I would ’ve asked you, only my mother told me not to. (Quirk et al. 1985 : 1103)
d. Many a man would have become wise, only he thought he was so already.
(1877 Spurgeon, Serm XXIII [OED])
e. I ought to have refused him, only I had not the heart. (1847– 48 Thackeray,
Vanity fair I, Ch. XXV [Poutsma 1905 : 294])
f. H e wanted to take precedence of all the Lowland gentleman then present,
only my father would not suffer it. (1814 Scott, Waverley Ch. XV [Curme
1931 : 167])
Thus, in (4b), we can say that he might have succeeded – but did not – because
of the fact that he is “rather lazy,” or that in (4e) I should have refused him – but
did not – because of my faintness of heart. I term this the ‘exceptive’ usage of
conjunctive only. This usage may also be found in Present- day English corpus
examples:
(5) a. She could go to the faculty lounge. Only, collegial relationships didn’t inter-
est her much. (2010 Bratman, Deletion [COCA])
b. She knew she should have been shocked by Stu’s kiss with John. Only , she
wasn’t. (2012 Riley, With this kiss [COCA])
c. He nods and tells her he would play it for her, only he doesn’t have a record.
(2006 Thornton, Ploughshares [COCA])
d. She might have laughed, only she feared it would come out as a sob. (2012
Calihan, Firelight [COCA])
e. With their taut muscles – tank tops are the uniform here – and striking fea-
tures, the younger men could pass for models. Only their twitching eyes
and trembling hands betray addiction and sleepless nights. (2009 Houston
Chronicle [COCA])
Although ‘adversative’ and ‘exceptive’ only express subtly different mean-
ings, they are often undifferentiated in grammars. The following descriptions
of conjunctive only often confuse or confl ate the two senses:
- Poutsma ( 1905 : 385) calls only an adversative- arrestive conjunction, where
“the second member denotes the opposite of the consequence or conclusion
expected from the fi rst”; its meaning is partly concessive, partly exception. - Quirk et al. ( 1985 : 1103) say that it can be paraphrased ‘the only thing is.’
- Jespersen ( 1949 : 95) says it expresses “a limitation of what has just
been said.”