I began my japanese reading journey with the first story of Japanese Graded Readers vol 1 - 女の子.
Now, I think I understood pretty much everything but … there´s always a but … there’s a small section I’m having some troubles:
でも 一つ だけ ありません.
それは, [言葉].
女の子 は [言葉] を 言いません.
After saying that there´s nobody/nothing else there “でも 一つ だけ ありません”
there’s this small part where quotation? marks are used “それは, [言葉]. 女の子 は [言葉] を 言いません.”
I’m guessing that [言葉] is some sort of placeholder for an unspoken word the little girl is saying but I dont know. Also I read the だけ is used on positive sentences but here is used on a negative one.
But only one thing is not there = But there’s everything but one thing
Edit: So here we can’t use しか, otherwise it would mean “But there’s only one thing (in the room)” which contradict the things in the room listed just before
Yes, yes … you are absolutely right!
Wow … so much learning stuff coded into such a small sentence!!!
OK, after yesterdays’ interesting messages I decided to take a careful look at things I thought I understood well and found a lot of subtle coonsiderations to make in order to proper understand the text
Let´s take the following sentences: 部屋に, 女の子がいます 部屋には, ものがたくさんあります
Here, the text describes who/what is inside the room but as you can see first one states 部屋に and second one states 部屋には.
The best explanation I found about it is the following:
You use に to indicate where things are AND to hint that those things are available in other places too. So first sentence: “there’s a little girl in the room” (not an especific girl) but other little girls are in other rooms
You use には to indicate where things are AND to hint that those things aren´t available in other places. So second sentence: “there´s a lot of things in the room” (especific things that are not available everywhere else but here)
My impression is just that 部屋に became the topic after the concept was introduced. That’s not to say that a subtler reading is impossible. But I get the sense that they wouldn’t want to repeat themselves without adding a は.
I suppose it does do that, if you want think of it that way.
The two sentences would be like this in English.
“In a room…”
“In the room…”
And the change from “a” to “the” in the English reflects the same concept as “に” to ”には" even if the grammar doesn’t align perfectly between the two languages. We start with “a” because we haven’t referred to any room yet. Then we switch to “the” when people know which room we’re talking about, the one already mentioned.
More like, starting with 部屋には、女の子がいます would cause confusion because people would be thinking “wait, you haven’t mentioned any room before. What room was that?”
As noted above, the other uses of は do complicate things a bit. You could start with には, but then a contrastive reading becomes more likely.
But the text we have in this story, there’s no reason to assume it’s a “tricky” は. A reading of it as “vanilla は” makes sense just fine.
I think it would just be unnatural. Because if you did want to make it seem like there are two rooms, you’d probably add some info to the second one. 違う部屋に or something like that.
That makes perfect sense … I just checked the full text and noticed the pattern you mention. It starts using に and then all further references use には so no confusion.
