I have a question about a grammar point. It is about a sentence coming from an exercise in the 新完全マスターN2 文法.
Here it is:
最近、失敗 _ をしているので気分が晴れない。少し休暇を取ろう。
To fill the gap, I have four possible answers: だけ、ばかり、に限って、の限りを.
The two last answers obviously can’t match here. But it seems to me, that だけ, and ばかり, can either be okay. I checked the answers sheet and the good one is: ばかり.
In general, I have no problem when differentiating だけ from ばかり. But in this specific context, I don’t understand why ばかり should match and not だけ.
“Recently, I am only failing/I am doing only failure …”
There must be a very subtle reason here… Is it because of the personal involvement of the speaker or something like that? Any ideas ?
The grammar dictionary says that ばかり stresses that it’s only much more than だけ does, “often with the implication that someone/something does [the thing] a lot or more than one expects”.
I confess I’m not sure that greatly helps explain why ばかり is more correct than だけ, though.
In the case of だけ it would be more like “i only fail”
I think the “just” is important, like “lately all I do is fail”, it has a kind of negative feeling, like “しまう” means “complete” but its mainly used for when something doesn’t go right compared to the more “neutral て切る”
最近お菓子食べてばっかりだ、太ってしまうのよ！
Lately I’ve done nothing but eat sweets, I’m going to get fat.
最近お菓子食べてるだけ、太ってしまうのよ。
Lately Ive only been eating sweets, Im going to get fat!
**In this case my example sentence ended up feeling quite feminine…
Indeed だけ is neutral, whereas ばかり is emphasizing the preceding noun. That explains why ばかり is more suitable as the speaker is complaining about his recent failures.