I think there’s a very comprehensive explanation below your post, that my brain currently cannot follow (but hopefully will tomorrow when I re-read it.) But my understanding is that it can be for animate objects when it’s possessive, not talking about existence per se.
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I’m still looking at other things and the entries from the Intermediate and Advanced Dictionaries, so feel free to comment if I made a mistake somewhere:
Thoughts on ば
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Rather than a conjunction like English, it acts more like a helper verb+conjunction hybrid and is the conditional form of words. It makes something conditional, similar to “if” but behaves like other helper verbs(i.e. ます,ない, せる/させる [causative], よう[volitional], れる/られる[受け身 receptive form or as it’s deceptively translated in most books “passive”])
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Note to self: counterfactual conditionals = what would have been true under different conditions
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To summarize differences between ば and other conditionals:
と “if/when” but it is exclusive and only has one outcome (one possibility with one outcome)
たら when an event happens, a following event happened/will happen
なら “since it’s___/ if it’s___”
Helpful resources/videos on ば and other conditionals
Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly - can't recommend Cure Dolly enough, treated Japanese as Japanese rather than teaching it as if it was English. The video format can be tough for some to tolerate.
CureDolly Textbook by dinuz - basically all her lessons in a Google Document. If you like Cure Dolly’s lessons, I recommend saving a copy and typing in personal notes.
Lesson 31: The ば Conditional
Lesson 30: Japanese Conditionals and と
Lesson 32: Conditionals made clear! たら、なら
Miku Real Japanese
ば form/Conditional form YouTube link
This lesson is mainly in English and she does the thing where she asks questions and gives a pause for you to respond before giving an answer.
Thoughts on ばかり
- Can be said colloquially as ばっか(always casual) or ばっかり(used in polite and casual speech)
- Works very similarly to “just”, but often has negative connotations
- It is a particle = postposition = similar to a preposition, but instead of coming before, it follows after.
- Differences between ばかり and other words:
だけ expresses a limit
しか technically the opposite of だけ, means more than, but is always in negative sentences so it really means “no more than”
のみ basically だけ, just used in formal situations
だらけ only used with nouns, almost always negative connotations, means “full of (things I don’t like)” or “covered with (something I don’t like)”
ばかり resources
Cure Dolly Lesson 27 ばかり meanings
Lesson 33: だけ,しか,ばかり,のみ
Miku Real Japanese 【N3】てばかり｜ばかりいる｜だらけvsばかり
Lesson mainly in Japanese, but has English subs that have Japanese subs and plain Japanese subs. She also uses really relatable examples.
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I’m reading through だけ today, and looking at the example sentences a couple of the uses seem almost interchangeable.
In particular:
このレストランは安いばかりだ
この家は大きいだけだ
I’m a little bit half asleep, but is there any nuance between the meanings in these sentences?
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I remember originally learning ばかり and it’s many uses and wondering how I could possibly understand which one was which. And then reading this entry and seeing someone explain how they all really mean the same thing (except the “about” one). And I was like: Why did no one explain it like this back then? -.-’
At least I could happily realize that I felt pretty comfy with all ばかり except the “about” one, which I can’t remember seeing, and I was confused how different that one was until in the notes section (note 4) they explained it came from classical Japanese.
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So this is covered a little bit in the Related Expressions section for だけで（は）なく on page 100.
ばかり is a hyperbolic expression. It expresses that something is JUST something to the point where it is too much or a lot. So the first sentence 「このレストランは安いばかりだ」it means something like “This restaurant is JUST cheap(affordable)” which means it’s really REALLY cheap. It can have other nuances depending on the context.
だけ emphasizes limit, kind of like “this is the limit” or “there is only this” and is more neutral when compared with ばかり as ばかり can have negative connotations. So for the second sentence, it would be “This house is only big” vs「この家は大きいばかりだ」 would be more like “This house is JUST (TOO) BIG.”
edit: I know it wasn’t asked, but しか would imply something is very little, or not enough.
Imma just steal Cure Dolly’s image from Lesson 33 which I linked in my other post under ばかり resources:
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Managed to catch up! 
Interestingly found the first part (introduction/instruction or whatever) much harder/overwhelming than the actual grammar entries =P
So far I’ve managed to do each section in a sitting, and it felt OK while reading through it. Made sense enough. Not sure how much sticks, but going through enough grammar resources it is bound to stick eventually, right… right? 
I’m also doing BunPro (finished N5, will work on N4 soon) and MaruMori (highly recommend! Free for now, will be pay to use later)
MaruMori have really great grammar explanations, and are working on grammar SRS. So hopefully I get to test it there once the SRS is up =)
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だい: I honestly can’t remember ever seeing this… Has this fallen out of favor? Is it more dialectal? Have I not read enough shounen manga? (It is my impression that weird talking styles are more common in shounen manga than the shoujo/shoujo-leaning manga I tend to read.) Basically, my question is: how common is this? I think I’ve seen かい which is mentions and will come up under K. (I guess I could have completely ignored a weird だい at the end of stuff I’ve read if it has only happened a couple of times.)
@Abstormal Nice! 
@Twelvewishes Added a link to your post with all the Bunpro links to the OP. Thanks for collecting those in such an easy to check way!
@lady_nelle And linked your post on ば and ばかり too.
If anyone else helpfully cluster links for specific points or leave an especially good grammar explanation, don’t be afraid to suggest I link it in the OP for each thread. I will try to remember to do it when I see it, but sometimes I don’t have time or forget. Thank you! 
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I’ve seen it a lot in games/anime for really arrogant characters, mostly どう＋だい
ゲーム言語 Breath of the Wild (All 18 Memories) Youtube Video
6:13 どうだい 今の
9:42 場所は…そうだな…あそこなんてどうだい?
25:49 でどうだい?
Wild Nihongo (Website link) uses a song lyric as an example, which uses かい too (the softer form of か in male speech):
やっと目を覚ましたかい？それなのになぜ目も合わせやしないんだい?
Some of you may recognize it, as it’s a song from 君の名は: RADWIMPS 前前前世「ぜんぜんぜんせ」(Song Youtube link) line at 0:21
I could probably find an example of it in some Japanese Let’s Plays, but none of the ones I watch have transcripts, and I’m too lazy to listen to a bunch of dialogue hoping to find it lol. (Youtube has a function where you can show transcript and then either use Ctrl+F to search for a word or sometimes, there’s a handy search bar). Edit: I usually encounter a lot more casual Japanese in 実況プレイ「じっきょうプレイ」Let’s Plays than I would normally hear from conversation with Japanese people. It seems like the polite barrier comes down in these situations… or I’m just too used to Japanese people speaking to me in やさしい日本語…
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I’m totally already behind haha but I’m working on catching up!
あげる
In Minna no Nihongo at least, they say that やる has fallen out of favor for use with humans (like your younger brother or your child), though it does still teach a few examples where it is used that way. For what it’s worth, google docs tried to get me to change those instances to あげる when I was typing some of my answers to the exercises, haha. It might still be totally acceptable to use it for plants and animals, though. The sense I got is that it feels a bit dehumanizing.
I tried looking for examples of やる in my translations to see if I could find any, but the other uses of the word are way too common haha and I got tired of wading through them, so I cannot say if I’ve seen it used in wrestling at least 
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One thing I want to note about あげる (and the others) is that it can actually be a fantastic clue as far as who is the subject of a sentence, if that information is omitted. There has definitely been a bit of a learning curve for me there, though, haha, because you have to learn to notice it. Cannot tell you how many times I’ve gotten tripped up by something and then had rodan point out “well, since it was あげる, the subject can’t be that person” or similar things.
I have an example from Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling! A few bonus もらうs in there, too. This is from Shoko Nakajima and Hyper Misao's post-mach comments after their match in TJPW's January 7 show:
Hard mode: here is the video. Context is that Misao (who is known for her trickery) gave their opponents food at the beginning of the match as a New Year’s gift, then attacked them when they didn’t have anything for her in return. (As usual, the transcript of the Japanese is from shupro, and the translations are mine and might have errors).
ミサヲ「勝ったぞー！ 享楽共鳴でこの間闘って、２人とも初白星上げて、今日はタッグで初白星。幸先めっちゃいいですね。…何食べてるんですか？」
Misao: “We won! We fought within Kyoraku Kyomei the other day and both of us started off the year with a win, and today we won our first match as a tag team. That’s a very good omen, isn’t it? …What are you eating?”
中島「もらったの」
Nakajima: “It was a gift.”
ミサヲ「それ私が用意したやつ。お返しとして私があげたやつをもらったんですね」
Misao: “That’s the one I prepared. You got the present I gave as a favor.”
中島「勝ったんだからお返しとして何かよこせって言ったら、もらったの」
Nakajima: “I won, so I told them to give me something in return, and I got this.”
ミサヲ「おいしいですか？」
Misao: “Is it good?”
中島「おいしい」
Nakajima: “Delicious.”
ミサヲ「よし、幸先がいいぞ。今日は全部ハッピーなかんじだったので」
Misao: “Well, that’s a good sign. Everything was happy today.”
中島「（カメラマンに）これ食べる？ 優勝できるよ。おいしいから」
Nakajima: (to the cameraperson) “Do you want to eat some of this? We can win the whole thing. Because this is delicious.”
ミサヲ「みなさんも私たちにお年賀をください。勝利という名の」
Misao: “Everyone, please give us a New Year’s gift, too. It’s called ‘victory.’”
中島「優勝したら褒めて。そしておいしいどら焼きを待ってます」
Nakajima: “Praise us when we win. And I’ll be waiting for that delicious dorayaki.”
ある 1
Example (4) given under note 5. (page 75) was interesting to me because MNN teaches いる for saying that you have children, not ある. It made me wonder if ある is still used for this, or if it has fallen out of favor in recent years, perhaps for similar reasons to やる?
@Arzar33’s point is interesting, though I’m not sure I fully follow that explanation, haha. The DoBJG’s explanation about possession makes more sense to me.
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I think I’ve seen だい and かい in maybe Horimiya. Can’t remember exactly where, but I do remember, that it was the first and only time I’ve seen them.
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Thanks for the replies on だい. Maybe my memory is right that I haven’t seen it much/at all. どうだい do ring a bell though. It does bear out my thinking that it probably is a lot less common now than it was in the 80s.
I feel like this is part of the value of doing this book club, because we can collectively notice if things are the same as when the dictionary was published, and that makes the dictionary more valuable. (Even more valuable would be if someone edited it for modern usage but anyway…)
@fallynleaf Interesting that you couldn’t find any あげる uses of やる if there is anywhere people use weird/interesting speech patterns it is wrestling, isn’t it? Maybe my impression is wrong. But if it isn’t, that is telling. But it does also depend on how much あげる is used in general in wrestling I guess. 
I’ll keep looking out for it. I did find it only a day or so after as I shared. I’ll see if it crops up anymore and from other characters.
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Week 6 starts now: 〜出す to どう
Of course, any comments and such for earlier entries in A-D is still welcome, encouraged even.
PS: When you finish week 5, you can track your progress of that in the second poll in the OP. So if you have to skip a week, or fall behind, you can tick off each box as you finish a week. Also if it isn’t helpful or useful to you, feel free to ignore it. I just thought I’d remind people of it, in case someone had forgotten about it who wanted to use it.
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Oh, it might be used at some point! I just gave up looking for it because doing a ctrl+f search for “やる” brings up way too many results that aren’t the やる we’re looking for, haha.
People for sure use weird speech patterns in wrestling and also insult their opponents in a myriad of ways, so I’d honestly be more surprised if it never happened… Seems like an easy insult, honestly!
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I was a bit more brief than I meant to. I did notice you said you didn’t check it all, but I still find it amazing that it didn’t show up in as much as you had the endurance to wade through. 
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The に6 in the first で explanation is a very menacing sight.
Also, this week is like half で. Quite literally out of 13 pages, 7 are just that.
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に has seven entries if I remember correctly. 
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だろう: I was surprised that adding more uncertain/maybe words to だろう sentence made them more likely, not less or same. きっと I get, but たぶん and おそらく, why does those two make it a more likely conjecture than same level or worse.
〜出す: I can never remember what this one means, because it just doesn’t make sense to me that it often means “to begin”. At least, its other meaning of out makes more sense, even if I find I understand that one less. Anyone have a good way of remembering this one?
For example d, 一時間ぐらいかけてとうとうその本屋を探し出した。, which meaning is used? The out one? That after one hour of searching it was finally “out”/visible. Begin doesn’t make any sense at all to me.
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Japanese has quite a lot of adverbs that act like early indicators of the grammar form that’s going to appear at the end of the sentence (others include まるで before a comparison or もし before a conditional), and I think these words that go with だろう are a bit like that – just the presence of the extra word in itself isn’t inherently emphasising the uncertainty or the comparison-ness or whatever in a “repetition-means-emphasis” way, it depends on the specific nuances of the adverb.
My personal intuition agrees that きっと and おそらく both tend to indicate more-likely conjectures, but I was a little surprised to see たぶん in the same bucket.
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Yes, this is ‘out’, although personally I think this specific word makes more sense to think about as a compound verb rather than a grammar pattern (i.e. it has nuance that isn’t a transparent combination of verb + auxiliary). EDICT has an entry for
探し出す; 捜し出す; 探しだす; 捜しだす; さがし出す 【さがしだす】 (v5s,vt) to track down; to locate; to find out; to smoke out; to ferret out; to chase up; to discover
whereas it doesn’t have one for 歩き出す, for instance. The Handbook of Japanese Compound Verbs classifies 探し出す as ‘means + goal’ – the goal is to put the thing out as visible, and the means of doing that is searching for it. (Notice all the 'out’s in EDICT’s list of glosses, incidentally.)
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