Surpassed only vs. Only surpassed

[grimmben4]

Can someone please tell me the difference between surpassed only vs. only surpassed? Thanks.

ex. Alex Rodriguez ranks as third greatest baseball player of all time, surpassed only by roger maris

ex. Alex Rodriguez ranks as third greatest baseball player of all time, only surpasssed by roger maris

[JonathanSchneider]

Actually, these are the same here. The placement of the word "only" can make a difference at times, but here the meaning is clear either way. Of course, there is a logical disconnect here: if A-Rod is the third greatest player of all time, then he would be surpassed by two other players, not just one.

[liu1993918]

Another topic discussed the same thing, but has the different answer.
Here: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... t2621.html

I am quite confused. Please tell me which one is correct.
Thanks in advance.

[tim]

Please tell me which one is correct.

Be sure to watch out for false dichotomies like this. Just because you list two things does not always mean one is right and one is wrong. This seems to be an increasingly common problem on the forums, and I would like all of our students to be careful not to assume that in any pair of ideas one has to be right and one has to be wrong.

In this case, the key is to re-read Jonathan's post. He mentions that sometimes the placement of "only" makes a difference and sometimes it does not. In this thread it doesn't make a difference, but in the one you link to it does. Now my challenge to you is to see if you can find what is different about the two scenarios that would account for this discrepancy. :)

[liu1993918]

ex. Alex Rodriguez ranks as third greatest baseball player of all time, surpassed only by roger maris

ex. Alex Rodriguez ranks as third greatest baseball player of all time, only surpasssed by roger maris

Ok, I will take the challenge.
In this case, as I quoted above, the meaning of 1st sentece seems wrong to me. Since Alex Rodrigurz is the 3rd greatest player, he cannot be surpassed only by Roger Maris. There are another man who surpassed Alex Rodriguez.
If Alex Rodriguez is the 2nd greatest player, these two sentences would be same.

Thus, that's why the answers are different.
Am I right?

[RonPurewal]

since those sentences are garbage (third greatest ... surpassed only by one other player ... hm?), i'll just make up some new ones.

The video was seen only by the three witnesses.
(= Only the three witnesses saw the video.)
––> no one else saw the video.

The video was only seen by the three witnesses.
(= The three witnesses only saw the video.)
––> the witnesses couldn't hear the video; they could only see it. (there could be thousands of other people who saw it and perhaps even heard it.)

in spoken english——which is MUCH more lax than the written language about word order——you'll occasionally hear people saying the second of these when they clearly mean the first.
in formal writing, though, there's a clear distinction.

[RonPurewal]

^^ so, if you make the appropriate analogies (and change "third" to "second"!), you'll see that "surpassed only by RM" is the correct version.
the other version is wrong, even though someone might say it. (remember that spoken english and written english are 2 different languages.)