- I only teach you.
- I teach only you.
- I teach you only.
I think that all the sentences have same meaning, but my teacher says that they are different from each other.
I think that the expressions are different but their meaning are same.
Can you help me understand the meaning of each sentence?
Best Answer
Only is one of the words (like even, too, and also) that have a stressed focus word in the sentence.
The focus word takes a heavy contrastive stress in speech, no matter where only occurs.
In these sentences, only appears before the verb phrase, which contains the focus in each case.
It can also appear right before the focus word (or right after, if the focus is a noun).
Of course, in writing, there is no stress, so it's harder to tell what the focus is.
So in writing it's safest to put only right before the focus word (the word with contrastive stress)
This rule is discussed here, with references and examples.