4.3. MORE PARTICLES 195
] is a single semantic block meaning ”to the extend of doing X”, so the
Japanese may have the verb twice, but the translation only needs it once.
This particle is sometimes translated with ”only”, but when it is, it typically
needs a very strange and contrived explanation. Instead, remember that
does not mean ’only’, but means ’save’ or ’except’, as used in for instance
”I didn’t do a dang thing today, save/except eat”:
”Today (I) did nothing except eat.”
That’s really all there is to it. The only additional rule is that
follows verbs in , or nouns directly:
”(There) is no one but (the) teacher.”
Unlike , does mean ’only’, and is typically followed by the instru-
mental particle to indicate something is done in some restricted way:
”(I) did it just by myself.”
The same idea can be expressed with , but then the phrasing
needs to be drastically altered:
”No one did it except for me.”
Notice that these two phrases connote very different things, even
though they share the same basic idea. Both claim that one person per-
formed a task, but the sentence with sounds far more positive than
the one with. The second sentence sounds almostaccusative, which is
a direct consequence of the fact that means save, and thus needs to be
used with a negative verb, as well as with an unnamed party in this case.
