原文地址: https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/197888/what-does-only-mean-in-its-only-natural-that
It’s only natural that you should worry about your children.
How would it be different if I removed “only” from the sentence?
It’s natural that you should worry about your children.
What does “only” mean and emphasise here? Is there a way to rewrite the sentence and save the meaning it conveys?
I’d love to have some examples. Thank you in advance.
“Only” (and in some cases “just”) is often used in this way as emphasis. The actual meaning will vary, but usually means that whatever follows is less extreme, less significant, less uncommon, or less unusual than you might expect. For example:
My car wouldn’t start, but I found it was only that I was out of gas.
Here “only” implies that I expected the problem would be serious, but it turned out to be minor. Another example:
She made a trip halfway across town only to buy some pastries from a bakery she really likes.
Here there is an expectation that, if she is going to make such an effort, she would be expected to buy more than just some pastries.
To start to understand Buddhist thought, only remember the fact that nothing is permanent and everything changes.
Here there is an expectation that Buddhist philosophy might be complicated, so the “only” reminds the reader that it actually is based on a simple philosophy.
In your example, “only” implies less extreme. While it’s expected that parents will worry about their children, some people might still think it’s unusual. The “only” helps reassure their parents that their concern is reasonable.
Certainly there are different ways to express certain ideas in English, but as long as they are idiomatic none are “better” than the others. They’re just different, and might not convey the same information. “Only” and “just” are useful in sentences like these – there’s no need to “reword” to clarify, because the intention is already perfectly clear. As intensifier words, they can often be omitted, but they are not superfluous any more than others like “very” or “most”.
For example, I can say, “She is pretty” instead of “She is very pretty”, but that would change my intended meaning. In the same way, “It is only normal that …’ has more emphasis than, “It is normal that …”