This is the third of a series of blog posts showing how I think about a syntax problem when I first notice it. For the first and second installment, see:
How to Syntax I (the now that-Construction)
How to Syntax 2 (Adverbs with Attributive Adjectives)
That first glimpse of a problem is an important period in thinking about syntax. I will occasionally choose phenomena that I notice, and talk about them in an informal fashion, breaking down the process of preliminary syntactic exploration. That is, I am just thinking off the top of my head (brainstorming), with few or no revisions. Ideally, I will give myself a time period of two to three hours maximum to prevent polishing. The focus of the discussion will be on process. I am not trying to come up with a polished analysis. Of course, if people suggest references for me to look at, I will look at them later, but that would be a second stage of thought, not the preliminary exploration.
Data Discovery
I do not recall how I first noticed the construction. I have known about it since at least Fall 2021, where I mentioned it briefly in a seminar I taught. But I kept it on the back burner, knowing at some point I would get back to it.
Combinatorial Basics
I want to investigate phrases such as the following:
(1) a. He is the only candidate.
b. The only candidate is sitting over there.
c. I met the only candidate.
For convenience, I will occasionally refer to this as the ‘only’-NP construction. An alternative involves the expression ‘one and only’, as in ‘He is the one and only candidate.’ Another related expression is ‘the lone candidate’. I leave aside these alternatives for now.
At first glance, the construction consists of a definite determiner, followed by ‘only’, followed by a noun.
An indefinite determiner is difficult or impossible to get:
(2) a. *He is an only candidate.
b. *An only candidate is sitting over there.
c. *I met an only candidate.
The examples in (2) all seem unacceptable to me, putting aside fixed phrases like ‘an only child’. Similarly, in the following (b) examples, the determiners with ‘only’ seem unacceptable:
(3) a. John is the only person I know.
b. John is a (*only) person I know.
(4) a. The only weird person is sitting over there.
b. That (*only) weird person is sitting over there.
(5) a. The only candidate is sitting over there.
b. Every (*only) candidate is sitting over there.
But possessors work fine:
(5) a. He is my only friend.
b. My only friend is sitting over there.
c. I met my only friend.
(6) a. his only friend
b. your only friend
c. their only friend
When there is an adjective or a numeral in the DP, it must follow ‘only’:
(7) a. The only big dog was in the corner.
b. *The big only dog was in the corner.
(8) a. The only two reporters were out for lunch.
b. *The two only reporters were out for lunch.
Although focus particles such as ‘only’ and ‘even’ overlap in their distributions (see (9) and (10)), the focus particle ‘even’ cannot be used in the same way (see (11)):
(9) a. Only John left early.
b. Even John left early.
(10) a. John only likes Mary.
b. John even likes Mary.
(11) a. *He is the even candidate.
b. *The even candidate is sitting over there.
c. *I met the even candidate.
Paraphrase and Entailment
Usually when ‘only’ modifies a constituent X, X is in focus. The general scheme is this, where (b) and (c) are entailments of (a):
(12) a. Only John came to the party.
b. John came to the party, but nobody else did.
c. It is not the case that Mary (or anybody else) came to the party.
In other words, for this example any DP substitution for John is false, as shown in (12c).
Similarly, when ‘only’ appears with a predicative constituent:
(13) a. John is only watching TV.
b. John is watching TV, but he is not doing anything else.
c. It is not the case that John is working (or doing anything else).
Now consider how such a paraphrase would work with the ‘only’-NP construction:
(14) a. The only dog was in the corner.
b. The dog was in the corner, but for no other x was the x in the corner.
c. It was not the case that the cat was in the corer (or any other animal).
These truth conditions are just wrong. Clearly, for (14a), it is possible that a cat could also be in the corner. In other words, interpreting [the only NOUN] as a focus construction where NOUN is in focus does not give the right results.
So what is the right paraphrase? It seems to be the following:
(15) a. The only dog was in the corner.
b. The x such that only x is a dog was in the corner.
(16) a. I saw the only person I know.
b. I saw the x such only x is a person I know.
In formal notation, the translation is (assuming a Fregean account of the definite article):
(17) a. the only dog
b. ιx[dog(x) ∧ ∀y[dog(y) --> x = y]]
‘The unique x such that x is a dog and for every y,
if y is a dog, the y = x’
But such a definition poses a bit of a conundrum. Consider the definition of the definite article from Heim and Kratzer (pg. 75):
(18) a. [[the]] = λf. f ɛ D<e,t> and there is exactly one x such that f(x) = 1.
the unique y such that f(y) = 1.
b. [[the dog]] = Presupposition: there is exactly one x such that dog(x) = 1.
Denotation: the unique y such that dog(y) = 1.
Comparing (17) and (18), it looks like ‘only’ is just restating the presupposition of the definite article. In other words, ‘only’ appears to be semantically vacuous when appearing with the definite article. But is this true?
(19) a. My friend is over there.
b. My only friend is over there.
If you and I are at a party, and I say (19a) pointing to the corer, you might infer that my unique friend at the party is over there. There is a uniqueness presupposition, but it is very fluid and flexible. In fact, if I say (19a), it could be the friend of mine that we were just talking about, even if I have lots of friends at the party.
On the other hand, (19b) seems less fluid and more rigid. Once again, if we are at the party, and I say (19b) pointing to the corer, your natural inference is that I don’t have any other friends in my life. If I wanted it to be clear we were talking about friends at the party, I would have to say: ‘My only friend at this party is over there.’
So it seems at the very least there is a difference in the possibility for domain restriction between the two forms (with and without ‘only’). I leave investigating this to further work, since today’s session is just supposed to be the first glimpse of the construction.
Speculations on Structure
As part of the first glimpse into the construction, I would like to speculate on the syntactic structure. The value of the speculation is that is provides a concrete way to test further predictions (against the structure). So consider the following sentence repeated from above:
(20) a. The only dog was in the corner.
b. The x such that only x is a dog was in the corner.
My suggestion is that ‘only’ does not modify its sister semantically in the same way that the focus particle normally modifies its sister (creating a quantificational structure, quantifying over alternatives).
First, I assume that in definite DPs like ‘the dog’, ‘the person’, there is a null category which is the argument of the noun phrase (see Collins 2024 for discussion, see also Koopman 2003, 2005). For convenience, let’s call that empty category ec:
(21) [the [ec dog]]
Second, this is enough to start to account for ‘only’-NP, if we say that ‘only’ modifies the empty category, with the interpretation in (22b).
(22) a. [the [[only ec] dog]]
b. the x such that only x is a dog.
I leave out the labels of the constituents, just giving the bare minimum for this first glace.
Combinatorial Basics Revisited
Now that I have put in place the sketch of an analysis, we can revisit some of the basic combinatorial properties listed above. For lack of time, I will not discuss all of them, but consider again the ordering of an adjective and ‘only’, repeated below:
(23) a. The only big dog was in the corner.
b. *The big only dog was in the corner.
I assume the structure is:
(24) a. [the [ec big dog]]
b. the x such that only x is a big dog
In other words, ‘big dog’ is acting as the predicate, and ec is the subject, so there is no way for ec to intervene between ‘big’ and ‘dog’. Therefore, since ‘only’ modifies ec, there is no way for ‘only’ to appear between ‘big’ and dog’.
Negative Polarity Item Licensing
A well-known property of ‘only’-phrases is that they license negative polarity items, as shown in (25):
(25) a. Only John knows any physics.
b. *John knows any physics.
But clearly, such licensing does not extend to the ‘only’-NP construction:
(26) a. *The only candidate knows any physics.
b. *The candidate knows any physics.
The difference between (25) and (26) follows from the analysis I outlined above in (22) above since on that analysis ‘only’ takes scope internal to the DP. In other words, in (25a) [only John] takes scope over the entire clause. In (26a), ‘only’ takes scope internal to the subject DP, not over the entire clause.
However, internal to the modified NP, a NPI becomes possible:
(27) a. *The candidate who has ever been to France is John.
b. The only candidate who has ever been to France is John.
This fact could also follow from the analysis is if the correct way to break it down is:
(28) a. the only candidate who has ever been to France
b. the x such that only x is a candidate and only x has ever been to France
I leave working out details to future work.
Technical Glitch
My preliminary analysis rests on the assumption that ‘only’ can modify an empty category ec. But in general, it does not look like ‘only’ can modify empty categories.
(29) a. I want (only) Mary to go.
b. I want (*only) PRO to go.
Intended: ‘I want only myself to go.’
(30) a. Only John left.
b. The man that (*only) ec left.
Example (29b) shows that ‘only’ cannot modify PRO. Example (30b) shows that ‘only’ cannot modify the trace of subject extraction in a relative clause.
It is unclear to me for the moment how to get around this problem. But acknowledging technical glitches is an important part of the discovery process. It could lead you to reject your initial analysis, or to give a much better analysis down the road.
One possibility, no considered so far, is that ‘the’ itself is the argument of the noun, so the structure would be the following:
(31) [[the only] dog]
If this were the case, it would look a bit like post focus ‘only’ in the following example:
(32) John only is allowed to enter the fort.
I put the issue aside for now.
Conclusion
I have spent a few hours analyzing the ‘only’-NP construction. The preliminary syntactic methods I have applied are the following:
(31)
a. Combinatorial basics
b. Paraphrase
c. Speculations on structure
d. Explaining facts in terms of structure
e. NPI licensing
f. Technical Glitch
The theoretical significance of the construction is that it may support the structure of DPs and the Argument Criterion as outlined in Collins 2024.
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