Le riviste sono soltanto disponibili in francese. (en → it)

[sentence bot 🤖]

Le riviste sono soltanto disponibili in francese.

en: The magazines are only available in French.

Duolingo forum topic: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/6195741

[Sofia222677]

The word order of the Italian sentence is unnatural. It should be "Le riviste sono disponibili soltanto in francese".

[gmads]

This is a particularly interesting sentence because of the adverb used.

Grammatically speaking, the correct sentence in English should have been: "the magazines are available only in French," because what is being focused is the language: there are only French magazines available... to readers, to suscribers, to people in general.

The rule regarding the modifier "only" is that it should be put as close as possible to the word or phrase being modified, therefore, what is actually being modified in the original sentence: "the magazines are only available in French," is the status or what can be done with the French magazines, that is, they are not being produced, nor sold, nor kept nor published... nothing but being available.

Regardless of the rule, however, the adverb "only" is usually expressed as early as possible, generally just before the verb. Thus, while the preferred word order should be "are available only" (32'600,000 Google hits), the most common one is "are only available" (59'200,000 Google hits).

Given Duo's affinity for literal translations, it then suggests as the correct Italian translation: "le riviste sono soltanto disponibili in francese," which, as mentioned already by Sofia222677, sounds unnatural. Why? Because as a focussing adverb, "soltanto" has to modify the most informative element (the focus) of the sentence, therefore, given that in the sentence in question we want to let know which of all the possible magazines (in Italian, in French, in Portuguese) are available —only those in French, in this case—, the adverb needs to qualify the attribute of the magazines (being in French), and not their state (being available, for sale, etc), thus, as Sofia222677 already indicated, the correct word order should be: "le riviste sono disponibili soltanto in francese," which lets us know that "solo le riviste in francese sono disponibili."

*** references

Avverbi: come riconoscerli ed esempi

Avverbi focalizzanti: modificano l’elemento più informativo della frase a cui si riferiscono.
-- ha rifiutato il lavoro solo per amore
-- anche Paola è venuta con noi

focalizzazioni (treccani.it)

In italiano, come in molte altre lingue, alcune parole tendono ad apparire in concomitanza con la focalizzazione di un costituente. Per lo più si tratta di avverbi o congiunzioni, quali anche, neanche, pure, neppure, solo (soltanto, solamente), proprio, soprattutto, perfino (persino), addirittura.

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