168 CHAPTER 4. PARTICLES
what mixing different things because they sound the same. In the follow-
ing example sentence, for instance, is not a particle, but the continuative
form of :
”She’s preĴy, and has good style too, don’t you agree?”It should most definitely not be read as if was an instrumentalis,
whereby the sentence would read something akin to ”She’s got good style
thanks to being preĴy”.
- Point or interval in time or space, destination, purpose, relation
This particle is a very versatile particle because of the way the Japanese
interpret processes and states in and of the universe. The most principle
function of this particle is to describe points or frames in time space. This
sounds complicated, so running through examples for all the combinations
might help clarify things:
”(I) will head out at 3.”This example indicates a point in time, namely the specific moment
3 o’ clock. In contrast to this, a time frame rather than a point in time can
also be indicated with :
”(I) exercise twice a week.”Here instead of an exact moment, a time frame is specified in which
something happens. However, is not restricted to just time:
”The cat’s napping on the couch.”Here is used to indicate a point in space, namely a spot on the
couch (remember from the previous particle section that if we wanted to