SQLkiwi (5/13/2011)
Tom.Thomson (5/13/2011)
(1) New Zealanders (or at least one of then) don't use the position in the clause of "only" to distinguish the three possible meanings that the combination of "only" with "may" can express in the same way the most British people do...I can't speak for all four million of us, but I had to choose between two interpretations:
"Pages in extents may be assigned to only one object"
1) "Pages in extents might (all) be assigned to a single object" (an observation)
or...if we are used to reading technical specifications and the like, perhaps as:
2) "You can only assign pages from an extent to the same single object" (an instruction).
Yes, I had the same two to choose between but because "only" came where it did I decided it probably didn't exclude the multiple objects case (but if only had come immediately before "to" I would have decided it was intended to exclude that case). And other positions of only (immediately before "be" or after "object" or before "pages" would indicate more or less probability that the exclusive meaning was intended or point to a third meaning which in this context makes no sense. I suspect this effect of word order is either weaker in NZ or altogether different there.
It is very hard to write things that mean the same to everybody, and it is also a very neglected skill (and I'm not much good at it - often when I remember to try I get horribly verbose).
Tom