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I know that for emphasis, the construction is N + こそ, such as

この本こそ私が探していた本です。

I also looked up examples that has に before こそ, such as

ここにこそ真の人生があった。

I'd like to know which of the following is/are correct:

  1. 私は、彼ではなく、自分こそ驚かされた。

  2. 私は、彼ではなく、自分こそに驚かされた。

  3. 私は、彼ではなく、自分にこそ驚かされた。
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2021-02-02T06:22:37.550
84004
2021-02-05T01:40:50.333
2021-02-05T01:40:50.333
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question
grammar particles particle-に
Does に go before or after こそ
For what it's worth, questions about very specific combinations of words can
often be answered with Google search, as long as you remember to use quotes to
force an exact match.

A [search for
にこそ](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E3%81%AB%E3%81%93%E3%81%9D%22)
returns >14 million results, while a [search for
こそに](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22%E3%81%93%E3%81%9D%E3%81%AB%22)
returns about 86k and a large number of them are cases where `こそ` itself is
being talked about, like dictionary entries. As a bonus, I can find one
[translated example sentence for
にこそ](https://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E3%81%AB%E3%81%93%E3%81%9D) and [none for
こそに](https://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E3%81%93%E3%81%9D%E3%81%AB). Given all
this, I think we can safely say it's `にこそ` in most cases.

> I'd like to know which of the following is/are correct:

To be frank these all look weird to me - `自分に驚かされる` is not very idiomatic.
Also, this would probably be clearer if you used a `に` with `彼` to make it
clear you were contrasting possibilities for the indirect object. You probably
want something like:

> 私は、彼にではなく、自分にこそ驚いた。
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2021-02-05T01:40:04.017
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2021-02-05T01:40:04.017
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answer