An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

4.3. MORE PARTICLES 193

be followed by a comma). Strangely enough, they both mean the same

thing, but the way they do it is just syntactically different.

English: ”This is true. However, there are more things at play.”

Japanese:

In this sentence, the pause is after , which is simply a contracted
form of. In fact, has four variants: , ,
and. In classical Japanese these all had subtly different meanings,

being a combination of the verb form (the
for )
and the compound particle , but in modern Japanese they can be used
essentially interchangeably, as long as the ”the longer, the more polite”
rule is observed. That said, both and contain the emphatic
, while and do not, which makes and more
contrastive than and.
All of these, however, follow phrases.

particles - Extent

This particle is not so hard to use, but it has a particular paĴern of use that

sometimes confuses people when they first learn it. For this reason, it’s

probably easiest to say that

stands for ’extent’ of actions, consequences,

or even of properties. For instance, would translate to ”the extent

of doing”. Similarly,

would be ’the extent of the height’, etc.

This marking of extent is quite useful when comparing items: where

[X] [Y] gives a similarity, and [X] [Y] makes Y more ’something’

than [X], [X] [Y] marks the extent of Y the same as for X. For instance:

literally: ”To the extent that it is pricey, it is tasty.”

meaning: ”As tasty as it is pricey.”

In effect, this [X] [Y] sets up a proportional relation between the