Sunday, October 21, 2018

grammar - Why is こと used in 「私に何かできること」?


How does it turn this into a noun clause? All I get from it is “I can do something” but I don’t see where こと fits in.enter image description here



Answer



私に何かできること translates to a noun phrase "something I can do". This こと is not a particle but a simple noun meaning "thing". And 私に何かできる is a relative clause that modifies こと. This seems to be the first time you asked about relative clauses on this site, but real Japanese sentences are full of relative clauses, and you probably have seen this construction before.


Let's start from this sentence:



私には医療通訳ができる。
I can do medical translation.




In case you're not sure what this に is doing, see: Why say "〜、皆には出来る。" instead of " 〜、皆は出来る。" in this context?


Next, with the basic grammar of relative clauses in mind, you can form the following noun phrase from the first sentence:



私にできること
the thing I can do



So I changed 医療通訳 to こと, and pulled it out to the end of the sentence. I also changed には to に.


何か is an adverb rather than a noun here. It adds the meaning of "some", "something", "somehow", etc. (e.g., 何か本を読もう = "I'll read some book", 何か単語を言ってください = "Say some (random) word.")




私に何かできること
something I can do



Finally, I feel this is not something this (seemingly Japanese) lady is saying to the other people. Saying "Something I can do!" suddenly to people around you makes no sense. So it's either a catchphrase of this ad or what she is thinking, i.e., "(So this is) something I can do!". If you're interested in how to say "Can I help you" in Japanese, see: Can I help you?


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