4.2. PARTICLES 173
talking about TV. This using as an emphasis marker is a fairly common
practice, although you need to know why you’re emphasising, of course.
3)By using , everything has changed. The speaker has indicated that
the information in the sentence requires disambiguation in terms of what
it applies to. In this case, the ”watching a lot” only applies to TV. While
and told us only one thing, namely the plain information that TV was
being watched a lot, tells us two things. First, the basic information, that
someone watched TV a lot. However, because the speaker felt they needed
to make sure that we know it only applies to TV, it also tells us it explicitly
does not apply to films or DVD rentals.
This makes very powerful, and also makes it very easy to misuse:
If you only want to state some information, you should not be using.
However, if you want to make sure that the context for some information
is unmistakable, is exactly the particle you want to use.
One very common use of this is in the form of social commentary,
by pairing it with verbal forms, followed by something that represents
a negative repercussion such as , indicating that something
”won’t do”,
, indicating something is bad, or similar such words:
literally: ”(you) not coming over today will not do”.
”(You) have to drop by today.”literally: ”Eating it is no good.”
”(You) may not eat this.”In these sentences, the negative repercussion is explicitly said to ap-
ply only in the situations marked by. Also, because is used, we know
that they don’t apply if whatever is suffixed to doesn’t apply.