Hi Marie,
This is a tricky pair of sentences with and a lot of what I want to write will depend on the context. Can I ask you where you found the original sentence?
To directly answer the question you posed: no, the sentence - only the dogs here are poodles - is quite different. This sentence tells you that out of all the places in the world, poodles are found only here. Thus P
DH. On the test the word “only” will usually operate as a necessary indicator. “only the…” should tell you that whatever noun phrase follows will be the necessary component of the conditional.
So if “only” is a necessary indicator, how can it operate as a sufficient indicator in your first sentence? Clearly it would be wrong to say that “The only” makes “dogs here” necessary. Rather, the sentence is telling us exactly what you wrote: DH
P
It is acceptable to imagine “
The only…” as a sufficient indicator and remember to interpret it as such if you see it again on the test. The other option is to imagine it as a weird function of English language syntax. We can often place the word “only” in different parts of a sentence to yield the same result. Compare:
1. The
only dogs here are poodles
2. The dogs here are
only poodles
3. The dogs here are poodles
only.
Each of these three sentences communicate the same logical relationship (DH
P) and there is no good reason in spoken English to regularly place the word “only” in a specific part of the sentence. We simply choose one over another in different contexts to emphasize different ideas. Just remember that these sentences carries a very different meaning from only the dogs here are poodles.
You can read more about this in chapter 6 of the LSAT Logical Reasoning Bible and in this post by Dave Killoran,
lsat/viewtopic.php?t=7614.
