I came accross the following passage in my textbook:

> ゆとり教育で学校で教える内容が減らされたため、その教育を受けた子供達は常識的に誰でも知っているはずのこと **で** さえ知らないという現象も出てきた。

I can understand the meaning of the sentence, as "Due to the decrease of
contents taught at school as a result of ゆとり教育, the phenomenon of children who
underwent that education and don't know even things that anyone should
commonly know, also happens."

Since 誰でも知っているはずのこと is the object of 知らない I would rather say directly:

> 誰でも知っているはずのことさえ知らない

Without any "で". i.e., if we were to remove the "さえ", it would apply "を":

> 誰でも知っているはずのことを知らない

I don't understand what is the function of で here. What am I missing?

よろしくお願いします。
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-03-29T16:36:51.997
85837
2023-05-17T17:05:00.553
32952
question
particle-で particle-さえ
What is the purpose of 「で」 in the following sentence?
In short, でさえ is an alternate form of さえ and means the same thing (though not
interchangeable in all syntactic contexts). で here comes with さえ. **で does not
have its own function** (e.g. locational), it simply comes attached with さえ.

[Difference between
さえ、でさえ](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/36397/difference-
between-%E3%81%95%E3%81%88-%E3%81%A7%E3%81%95%E3%81%88) explains it well
enough (check links and comments).

It's acceptable to say:

  * こと **さえ** 知らない
  * こと **でさえ** 知らない
  * こと **を** 知らない

However, it's much, much less common to say **をさえ** 知らない. The さえ usually
replaces the を. (This is similar to how one would say リンゴが好き。ドリアンも好き。 but you
wouldn't say ドリアン **がも** 好き.)

/// If you were to completely remove でさえ, you would get:

  * ...誰でも知っているはずのこと知らない...

Which is possible, [since dropping certain
particles](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/80583/is-there-a-
particle-dropped-in-the-
sentence-%E3%81%8A%E5%B1%8A%E3%81%91%E7%89%A9%E3%81%84%E3%81%9F%E3%81%97%E3%81%BE%E3%81%99)
(を in this case) is possible and normal, especially in **informal** speech.
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2021-09-13T21:27:48.917
90315
2021-09-14T03:04:01.990
2021-09-14T03:04:01.990
40451
40451
85837
answer