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I have a question about the following sentence fragment.

> その巨体は残り少ない緑と僅かばかりの生物を食い荒らし

Context: It's talking about a gigantic sand worm thing, that is in process of
trying to eat someone. It's living in a desert with scarce greenery and life.

What I'm wondering about is the

> 僅かばかりの生物

I'm wondering whether 僅かばかりの means little, as in small creatures, or could it
mean more along the lines of really scarce animals, since those would be more
rare than scarce greenery. I'm also assuming that ばかり is here just to
intensify 僅か.

I'm asking because small animals would not really gel with later comments
about them devolving to cannibalism in case food is missing and it's currently
trying to devour whole a human. So I don't know if this is the writer making a
mistake or me.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-27T22:58:17.337
56240
2018-01-28T09:20:49.763
2018-01-28T09:20:49.763
7944
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question
interpretation
Interpreting 僅かばかりの生物
わずか never means small _size_. It always means "scarce" (small _quantity_ ) or
"slight" (small _degree_ ). And yes, in this case ばかり intensifies how scarce
生物 are.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-28T00:50:19.747
56243
2018-01-28T00:50:19.747
5010
56240
answer