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Is there a difference in meaning between the following two sentences?

I will help you prepare for the meeting only if you finish your report.

I will help you prepare for the meeting, but only if you finish your report.

Do they both mean finishing the report is required for getting help preparing the meeting?

To me, the second sentence sounds as though finishing the report is enough to get help preparing the meeting.

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I'll give it a shot.

"I will help you prepare for the meeting, but only if you finish your report": This implies that finishing the report is a necessary and sufficient condition for me to help you prepare for the meeting. "I will help you do A, but only if you finish B." The wording implies that only B matters, not C, D, E, ...

"I will help you prepare for the meeting only if you finish your report": This implies that finishing the report is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition for me to help you prepare for the meeting. "I will help you do A only if you finish B." The wording does not imply that you may not also need to finish other tasks, such as C, D, E, ...

There appears to be a clear difference in meaning between the two statements.

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  • Can you provide any backup for that interpretation? In my view that but is superfluous and adds (or subtracts) no sense of sufficiency on the following condition. I'd rather see it as an emphasis of the necessity that the condition has to be fulfilled. Spoken however, I'd just see it as filler.
    – Helmar
    Commented Sep 30, 2016 at 23:33
  • @Helmar No, I can't, but it's seems logically correct to me. The but seems to me to add extra emphasis, to focus one's attention on, the report in question, more so than the wording of the sentence without the but. The latter seems to me to leave open the possibility that even if you finish the report, I may not help you prepare for the meeting. But, alas, I am merely repeating my answer.
    – Richard Kayser
    Commented Oct 1, 2016 at 5:16

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