4.5 Topic, Focus & Adverbial Particles: は/が, しか〜ない, だけ, ばかり, でも, など

Topic, Focus & Adverbial Particles (とりたて助詞)

Case particles (Section 4.4) say what role a noun plays. Focus particles sit on top of that and say how the speaker is framing it — as the topic, as the surprising new fact, as barely enough, as too much of one thing. They are tested everywhere: Mondai 1 blanks, Mondai 4 paraphrase pairs, and Reading, where は/が tracking decides who did what.

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1. は vs が: The Distinction That Never Goes Away

The workable rule is about where the new information sits, not about subjects.

は pushes new information to the right of it. が pulls new information onto itself.

Four Situations Where Only が Is Possible

1. With a question word as subject: 「誰が来ましたか。」 → 「田中さんが来ました。」 The answer keeps が because the person is the new information. ✗誰は来ましたか.
2. Inside a relative clause: 「背が高い人」「私が書いた手紙」. Inside a noun-modifying clause, は cannot appear — and が frequently softens to の: 「私の書いた手紙」.
3. Introducing something for the first time, especially with ある/いる: 「机の上に本があります。」 Once introduced, it switches: 「その本は兄のです。」
4. With the ~が好き / ~が上手 / ~がわかる / ~が要る family, where the object of the emotion or ability takes が: 「私は日本語がわかります。」

Two Situations Where は Is Strongly Preferred

1. Contrast: 「コーヒーは飲みますが、お茶は飲みません。」 Both nouns take は because they are being set against each other.
2. Negation: Japanese prefers は over が or を when the predicate is negative — 「時間はありません。」

Reading application. In a passage, は usually establishes the paragraph's subject and then stays implicit for several sentences. When a sentence has no visible subject, the last は phrase is nearly always the answer. A が phrase, by contrast, is local to its own clause.

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2. The Quantity-and-Attitude Set

These particles all comment on an amount. What separates them is the speaker's stance.

しか〜ない: Three Non-Negotiable Rules

しか is the one that catches learners, because it behaves unlike anything in English.

1. The predicate must be negative. 「千円しかありません。」 There is no affirmative しか sentence.
2. It replaces を and が outright. ✗「千円をしかありません」 ✗「私がしか行きません」 → ✓「千円しかありません」「私しか行きません」. It stacks on other particles, though: 「東京にしかありません。」「バスでしか行けません。」
3. The nuance is scarcity. 「一つだけあります」 is a plain statement; 「一つしかありません」 says the single item is disappointingly few — even though both describe exactly one item.

That last point is the standard Mondai 4 (paraphrase) pairing: an examiner shows 「五分だけ休みました」 and asks which sentence is closest, with 「五分しか休みませんでした」 among the options. They describe the same five minutes, so the discriminator is entirely the affirmative-vs-negative predicate the two forms require.

ばかり: Two Readings at N4

• Excess of one type: 「甘いものばかり食べないでください。」 (Don't eat nothing but sweets.)
• Just did it (〜たばかり): 「日本に来たばかりです。」 (I have only just arrived in Japan.) Note that 〜たばかり is about the speaker's feeling that it was recent, so it can attach to events months old; 〜たところ is about objective immediacy and cannot.

でも: Two Readings at N4

• After a noun — "or something": 「映画でも見に行きませんか。」 The suggestion is offered lightly, as one option among many. This is the polite default for invitations; a bare 「映画を見に行きませんか」 is more direct and slightly pushier.
• After a question word — "any": 誰でも (anyone), 何でも (anything), いつでも (any time), どこでも (anywhere), どれでも (any of them).

Contrast that with question word + か ("some"): 誰か (someone), 何か (something), どこか (somewhere), いつか (sometime) — and with question word + も + negative ("no…"): 誰もいません (nobody is there), 何も食べません (I eat nothing), どこにも行きません (I go nowhere).

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3. も: Addition and Emphasis

も is the "too / also" particle, and like しか it replaces は, が and を rather than stacking with them: 「私も行きます」 (✗私はも / ✗私がも), but it stacks elsewhere: 「東京にも行きました」.

Its second N4 job is emphasising a large quantity: 「三時間も待ちました。」 (I waited a full three hours — and I am not happy about it.) Compare 「三時間待ちました」, which is neutral. The mirror image is しか〜ない for a small quantity, giving you a tidy pair to remember together:

• 「一時間もかかりました。」 — an hour, and that is a lot.
• 「一時間しかありません。」 — an hour, and that is not much.

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4. Fast Elimination for a Focus-Particle Blank

1. Check the predicate's polarity first. A negative predicate opens the door to しか, 何も, 誰も and でも-negatives; an affirmative one closes it. This single check kills half the distractors.
2. Ask whether the amount is being praised, tolerated or complained about. Neutral → だけ. Insufficient → しか〜ない. Excessive/monotonous → ばかり. Surprisingly large → も.
3. If the noun is followed by a verb of drinking, eating or going in an invitation, でも is very likely the intended softener.
4. For は/が, find the new information. If the sentence's news is the noun itself, use が; if the news comes later in the predicate, use は.