99433
> ハグリッドと自分 **だけにしか** 見えないんじゃないか、とハリーは思ったが、...  
>  Harry wondered if it wasn't visible to any one except him and Hagrid, ...

It seems that I could remove だけに from this sentence and preserve the meaning.
I assumed that Xしか or XとYしか where exhaustive in the sense that XとYしか見えない means
that it is invisible to every single person except X and Y. Is this true? If
so, then adding だけに seems like a tautology.

Am I missing something? Is だけに redundant? Is it just adding emphasis? What's
going on here?

I also wonder how this works grammatically. What purpose is に serving?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-04-23T14:16:29.820
99432
2023-04-23T16:41:39.807
7944
question
grammar particle-に particle-だけ particle-しか
Usage of だけにしか in XとYだけにしか見えない
だけ is redundant and can be removed, but I would leave に.

> ハグリッドと自分 **にしか** 見えないんじゃないか  
>  It may be visible only to Hagrid and me

This に plays a similar function to the “to” in “it wasn’t visible to…” Without
it, the sentence could be ambiguous because ハグリッドと自分 could be understood as
the only ones someone can see.

> ハグリッドと自分 **しか** 見えないんじゃないか  
>  They may be able to see only Hagrid and me  
>  (Only Hagrid and I may be visible)
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-04-23T14:57:45.657
99433
2023-04-23T16:41:39.807
2023-04-23T16:41:39.807
43676
43676
99432
answer