Only (recently)

Johnny   Thu Dec 11, 2008 3:27 pm GMT
I was wondering if "only", when used to mean "as recently as", is used in a fixed idiomatic position or it can also be put in other common positions.

I found out Mary is actually married only yesterday.
I started to learn English only recently.
I was in Iraq only a week ago. Do I really need to go back there?

In the above versions, only+adverb are together. My question is, can they be separated, in general? Would the result be more or less common or idiomatic? Result of separation:

I only found out yesterday Mary is actually married.
I only started to learn English recently.
I was only in Iraq a week ago. Do I really need to go back there?
Another Guest   Thu Dec 11, 2008 4:59 pm GMT
Variants, in the order that I would prefer them:

I found out only yesterday that Mary is actually married.
I only found out yesterday [that] Mary is actually married.
I found out Mary is actually married only yesterday.

The last one implies that the marrying was yesterday, rather than the finding out.

[And I find "is actually married" rather odd as well. I would go with "actually is married", or just "is married". "actually" has become a filler word that people use without any good reason. It would depend on context, though. "Is actually married" suggests that you knew that people thought she was married, but didn't know she was actually married.]

I only recently started to learn English.
Only recently did I start to learn English.
I started to learn English only recently.
I only started to learn English recently.

The last implies that English is the only language that you're recently started learning.

It's been only a week since I was in Iraq.
I was in Iraq only a week ago.
I was only in Iraq a week ago.

The second takes some parsing to process that the "week" refers to time since being in Iraq, not time spend in Iraq. The third one suggests that a week ago, Iraq was the only place visited, which is a meaning completely different from what is intended.

Not only should "only" generally not be separated from the adverb, the whole adverbial phrase "only+adverb" should, generally, not be separated from the verb.