| 词组 | even |
| 释义 | even Even is an adverb whose placement can affect its meaning, according to the relatively few commentators who bother to mention it. In speech the location of even in the sentence is not especially important, since its intention is clearly signaled by stress. In this respect it is like only, which almost every commentator has discussed at length. Longman 1984 observes that a natural place for even to fall in the sentence is just before the verb: "John even works on Sundays." The meaning of this example would be perfectly clear in speech and, in fact, would be hard to misconstrue in writing. But the example is very simple. Safire 1984 produces a more complex example from the headline of a book advertisement: • Only NAL Could Publish a Book That Even Scared Stephen King Here we find even placed in the familiar speech pattern given in Longman, but the context is sufficiently complex to raise at least some doubt as to the meaning of the sentence. It pleased a correspondent of Mr. Safire's to ring several possible interpretive changes upon the sentence, which can be easily disambiguated in print by placing even directly in front of Stephen King, though at the cost of a possibly humorous even Stephen. This, then, is our general advice: if your sentence is complex enough to cause possible confusion when it is read silently, without the assistance of the voice, put the even directly in front of the word or phrase it qualifies, as has been done in this example: • Colloquialisms are necessarily used even in the formal writing of dialogue —Shaw 1980 • If your sentence is as simple as the Longman example, normal speech placement of even is unlikely to cause confusion. See also only 1. |
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