-1

The sentence "you only can dream of the stars" - it's in a song lyric. I have tried singing it "you can only dream of the stars" which I think is semantically correct... but the emphasis sounds wrong, & having "only" as the second word just sings better. I would welcome opinions about just how unacceptable this is grammatically. Thanks, robb

Robb Johnson
  • 1
  • you only can dream of the stars is grammatical. you only... could mean you alone, but you only can dream could mean the only thing you can dream of is the stars. In other words, it's ambiguous when taken out of context. – Arm the good guys in America Aug 20 '17 at 18:16

1 Answers1

0

Without a link to the song I can't know whether "stars" means "suns" or "famous people", I assume the first.

The second sentence could mean there is nothing else you can do with stars, for example:

Can we reach the stars?

You can only dream of the stars.

The first sentence could mean that in some circumstance, there is only one thing you can do:

My lover has gone, how may I be consoled?

You only can dream of the stars.

Just an angle - the above sentence is not very grammatical. A more grammatical interpretation could be:

Only you can dream of the stars, nobody else.

Weather Vane
  • 20,971