Not Only... But Also
This article was accepted into the corpus but its outbound wikilinks were never NER-processed — typical at the deepest BFS hop or when the run's entity cap was reached. No expansion funnel to show.
| Not Only... But Also | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Name | Not Only... But Also |
| Type | Correlative conjunction |
| Origin | English |
| First recorded | 16th–17th century (approximate) |
| Related | Also; But; Neither... Nor; Both... And |
Not Only... But Also is a correlative conjunction pair in English used to link two coordinated elements in order to add emphasis, contrast, or accumulation. It functions to present a primary item and then append an additional, often surprising or reinforcing, item and appears across literary, journalistic, theatrical, and colloquial registers. The construction has parallels in many languages and features in the prose of authors ranging from William Shakespeare and John Milton to Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf.
Etymology
The phrase derives from the combination of the adverbial negative scope marker "not" and the additive "also" with the coordinating particle "but" acting historically as a marker of contrast. Early modern usage can be traced through texts associated with Elizabethan era writers and legal documents of the Stuart period, showing influence from Middle English and the syntactic patterns of Early Modern English. Comparable correlative structures appear in translations of classical authors such as Cicero and Quintilian in Renaissance rhetorical treatises, and the pattern was codified in prescriptive grammars by figures like Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray.
grammatical structure
Grammatically the construction consists of two linked conjuncts: the preposed negative or limiting phrase (the "not only" clause) and the postposed additive phrase introduced by "but also". The paired elements may be simple constituents—nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, or clauses—and must be parallel in syntactic category to satisfy principles discussed by Noam Chomsky-era generative grammarians and later by corpus linguists at institutions such as Corpus of Contemporary American English projects. Example schematic forms include: - Not only [NP] but also [NP]. - Not only [VP] but also [VP]. - Not only [Clause] but also [Clause]. Ellipsis is common: when the repeated material is recoverable, speakers omit it in the second conjunct, a process analyzed by scholars at University of Cambridge and Harvard University as gapping or right-node raising phenomena.
Usage and function
Functionally, the pattern serves additive emphasis, contrastive correction, and two-tiered focus. It can mark surprise (as when a minor expectation is followed by a major one) or intensification (stacking attributes). Usage appears in speeches by statesmen like Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt to build rhetorical momentum, in comedic timing used by Laurel and Hardy-era scripts, and in scholarly prose for enumerative packing by T.S. Eliot and George Orwell. Journalists at outlets such as The New York Times and broadcasters at BBC employ the construction for headline punch and cadence.
Variants and equivalents in other languages
Many languages possess correlative constructions with comparable semantics. For example: French uses "non seulement... mais aussi" found in texts by Victor Hugo; German uses "nicht nur... sondern auch" as in works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; Spanish has "no solo... sino también" in the corpus including Miguel de Cervantes; Italian uses "non solo... ma anche" attested in Dante Alighieri scholarship. Slavic languages show cognate forms: Russian "не только... но и" appears in writings by Leo Tolstoy, Polish "nie tylko... ale także" occurs in historical documents associated with Jan Matejko. Comparative grammars at University of Oxford and Sorbonne University detail morphology and pragmatic equivalence.
Historical development and notable examples
The evolution of the construction maps onto shifts in English stylistics from rhetorical classicalism to modern concise prose. Notable early printed instances appear in King James Bible-era literature and in sermons by preachers influenced by John Calvin and Martin Luther translations. In the modern era, the construction is prominent in oratory by Abraham Lincoln and in satire by Jonathan Swift. Literary critics examine its use in Jane Austen for ironic counterpoint and in James Joyce for syntactic experimentation. Playwrights such as Oscar Wilde and Arthur Miller used the pattern for punchlines and character revelation.
Ambiguity, emphasis, and stylistic effects
The interplay of negation and addition can yield scope ambiguity: whether "not" negates only the first conjunct or both depends on prosody and punctuation, a point analyzed in syntactic and semantic literature at Stanford University and MIT. Emphatic readings arise when prosodic stress falls on "also" or on the second conjunct, creating contrastive focus similar to patterns studied by Roman Jakobson. Misplacement or lack of parallelism can create garden-path effects in parsing, exploited deliberately by humorists like P.G. Wodehouse.
Pedagogical considerations and common errors
Language instruction at institutions such as TESOL programs and British Council materials emphasizes parallelism: learners must match parts of speech across the two conjuncts. Frequent errors include mismatched categories (e.g., "Not only an artist but also writes"), punctuation misplacement (comma use before "but also"), and scope misunderstanding that teachers at University College London and Columbia University address with contrastive drills and corpus-based examples. Exercises typically involve substitution, ellipsis restoration, and prosody training to ensure idiomatic and unambiguous use.
Category:English phrases