I usually parse かの as あの as well (might be wrong but it makes sense to me)
Hmm, frankly, this topic is a bit… nasty, and I don’t really have a strong opinion on the matter.
There’s a long-standing debate in Japanese as to what is a case marker and what is a postposition. I’d say the mainstream viewpoint currently is that there is a difference between case markers and postpositions, but there’re some schools that treat everything as postpositions or something else… However, I’m far far from an expert on this question, as it tends to get very technical, syntax-wise, so maybe I’m wrong as to what’s current.
Details, details...
Back to the topic, yes, as Leebo said, people normally treat that location+を as a postpositional phrase (adjunct). I don’t know whether there are some who argue it’s always an accusative case marker, but that could well be. The problem is that, basically, for が, it’s pretty clear cut; for を, mostly, except there’s the issue with locative を “through”; for に, things get really nasty—is that a dative case? a dative case & a locative/goal postposition? how do you decide?
(The “standard” view seems to be that there are three fundamental cases: nominative が, accusative を, dative に; rest is postpositions, but を and に can also be postpositions sometimes…)
You might think “why not make everything a postposition then?” but… to simplify, there’s a lot of theory out there built on the idea that predicates “naturally” come attached to a number of arguments, which are case marked, whereas postpositions have semantics of their own, that does not depend on what verb (form) you use. (This is related to what @NicoleIsEnough asked about the other day—lexical semantics.)
Anyway, I might have said too much already (hopefully nothing wrong), given that I know very little about the details or whatever the current favoured view is, for Japanese…
Ohhhh. That makes sense. Thanks a lot!
Thanks for your thoughts @Carvs ! Very interesting as usual.
I read through the paper Ono and Jones (2009), Conversation and grammar: Approaching so-called conditionals in Japanese and damn, this part hit hard :
we found that more than half of the conditional forms in our data (52.5%) are associated
with various degrees of fixedness. These examples include lexicalized expressions,
idioms, set phrases, and collocations that do not seem to be produced based on regular
syntactic rules. We call this type “(semi-)fixed conditionals,” as opposed to “rule-based
conditionals,” which can be understood to be based on regular syntactic rules.The prevalence of (semi-)fixed conditionals suggests that fixed linguistic expressions
play at least as important a role as syntactic rules in everyday talk, suggesting that we
need to pay far more attention to this type of language in future research.
Half of conditional in daily speech are associated to fixed expression… (and thus can’t be easily deducted by rules alone…)
DOJG says that you can’t use adjectives with 限り(は), giving the example 上手な限り誰でもいいです is incorrect.
But this video says otherwise, as does Shin Kanzen Master which gives the example 足が丈夫な限りは、まだまだ山上りが楽しめるだろう。
So which is it?
Hm, that restriction seems strange to me, as 可能な限り is quite common, for example. AFAIK, the explanation in the video captures the current usage pretty well, in that, for some reason I do not know:
- Adj-i + 限り, while it exists, tends to be used as a noun(?), i.e., only before the copula だ, e.g., 恥かしい限り{だ・で}, but not standing alone adverbially. The meaning is as expected, though, “at the limit of”, “very”, “extremely”.
- Noun + 限り is idiosyncratic, in that outside of quantity / time nouns (and, according to Martin 1975, proper, human, and place nouns), it doesn’t seem to attach directly, and instead you’ll see の限り, but with direct adverbialisation, e.g., 力の限り standing alone, instead of ??力の限り{に・で} or something, as you might expect.
Why things are that way, I have no idea. I have been unable to find much literature on this particular topic.
Note that it is also related to something we had been discussing with @jneapan, that is whether nominal clauses adnominalise to な before words such as 限り or こと (as a nominaliser). Martin 1975 says they should, and similarly places no restriction on the nature of the sentence preceding 限り, though it seems that in practice the above idiosyncrasies apply. Since our previous discussion, I have come across two mentions (in passing) of なこと in different papers; one of them ruled it out as clearly ungrammatical, while the other noted that it seemed theoretically possible but in practice rated it ?? (very odd).
As usual, I encourage others, with more language exposure, to comment on the relative commonness of the forms.
と同時に can’t be used with いーajdectives?
Is there more context to this question?
Also, sure you can.
One such example I found when looking this up:
彼は厳しいと同時に優しい。
First sentence from here:
http://www.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=todoujini
Not really, I just noticed BunPro doesn’t list them in conjunction with と同時に.
DoIJG does not list い adjectives as a possible formation for と同時に
It looks like anyone can add sentences to that jgram site.
They do list な adjectives, which need である to connect, and the resulting translated sentences feel similar to ones that would have い adjectives, but I’ll dig a little more.
EDIT: A native I asked said the い adjective sentence sounds fine to her. It’s possible the formation examples are just not exhaustive, or that it’s not acceptable in a strict sense, but it’s acceptable in a colloquial sense… hard to be certain.
EDIT 2: It actually has a note that い adjectives are usually not used with と同時に. So take that for what its worth… a native says it sounds fine, but the book says they usually aren’t used.
From the Handbook. A = i-adjectives.
Another question:
私の弟はゲームをしてばかりですよ。
My little brother does nothing but play video games.
Don’t quite get the use of です here? Is てばかり considered to be something that’s not a verb? Do you put です even after verb?
I have no real reason for asking this, it just “feels/sounds” weird to have it there.
Grammatically it functions as a noun. From 許り(ばかり)[副助]の意味 - goo国語辞書
[副助]名詞、副詞、活用語の連体形、一部の助詞に付く。
So it’s a noun or adverb according to this.
I sometimes read too fast and miss the point. See below
Remember, these constructions aren’t just super long verb conjugations or whatever. They’re different words and phrases added together. This seems to be a persistent source of misunderstandings.
It’s an adverbial particle.
And yeah, it needs to be predicated with だ/です if there’s nothing else predicating.
This is maybe getting a little bit too philosophical, but things sound weird likely because they’re outside of what we’re used to. The more you hear/see ばかりです, the less weird it’ll sound.
That source isn’t actually calling it a noun/adverb I think.
[副助]名詞、副詞、活用語の連体形、一部の助詞に付く。
It’s saying it attaches to nouns, adverbs, attributive forms and particles.
You’re right, I read that too fast and missed the point. I just saw 名詞 in the beginning and glossed over everything else.
I wonder if it’s more natural to say ゲームばかりをしている ゲームばかりしている or ゲームしてばかりいる
Oh, no, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the reason. But I wanted to know why my “feel” is wrong so I could correct my feel faster, I guess. It helps to know why.
They might mean different things. Like the first one might mean that someone plays games only (as opposed to playing other things), while the second one might mean that someone only plays games (as opposed to doing other activities).
(But I’m not sure).
EDIT: Actually I feel like in English both of those sentences mean the same thing. I think everyone gets what I’m trying to say though.
EDIT2: Actually I’m wrong. Only - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary.
Apparently the function of “only” changes depending on it’s position in the sentence. I’ve been speaking English for 21 years and I didn’t even know that.
I don’t know if it is wrong but I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t usually put a particle after ばかり. I would phrase it ゲームばかりしている. (or ゲームしてばかりいる of course)
As for the difference, I agree with @Xerogravitii
ゲームばかりしている - To play nothing but games.
ゲームしてばかりいる - To do nothing but play games.
Even this sounds weird to me. I take it that literally it means “There is (iru) only doing (shitebakari) of games (geemu)”?
I rather think of it as している - to be doing; してばかりいる - to be only doing.