Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-secsh-publickey-subsystem-03.txt

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA@localhost>]

[warning: linguistic logic-chopping ahead.  Executive summary: "sent
only by" is OK with me.]

>> It still suffers from the problem: the "only" is attached to the
>> wrong thing.  [...]
> Indeed it does.  However, I believe another permutation solves the
> problem without sounding quite as awkward.  If you say 'sent only
> by', then 'only' attaches to the prepositional phrase "by the
> server".

Mmm, that's true.  When I get into misplaced-modifier mode, I start
reading such things far more strictly, which leads to interpreting
"sent only by the server" as "sent only by, not below, on, without, or
any other preposition, the server".  But I think you're right, that
without special marking, the whole prepositional phrase is what the
modifier will attach to; I'd write "sent only *by* the server" (and
emphasize correspondingly if speaking) if I really meant to attach it
to the preposition itself.

> OTOH, it could be argued that if status messages are sent only by the
> server, and the server never talks to itself, then they are also only
> sent by the server, and never received by it.  :-)

Yes - but are they generated by it?  Logged by it?  Soldered by it?
Lubricated by it?  There are lots of other verbs which could go there,
some of which (unlike my latter two examples :-) aren't excluded by
semantic considerations.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse%rodents.montreal.qc.ca@localhost
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B