Grammatical justification for でしかない The song eX Dream by Myuji (which appears in an anime OP) contains the sentence: > []{} The general point of the sentence is fairly clear, meaning "a dream is just a dream". But what is the best way to think of the construction? At first I saw it as , as in, "a dream is a dream and...", but now I'm wondering how correct this is or if it's correct at all. Is it better to look at it as a separation of the parts of ? Does this happen in many other cases, where you use a qualified followed by ?

Let's start with something common:

> 'Dreams are dreams.'

Let's negate it (using instead of its contracted form ):

> 'Dreams are not dreams.'

is a {} ("binding particle"). Any fits in this spot. is also a :

> 'Dreams are nothing but dreams.'

* * *

The "modern" grammatical analysis of this stuff is that is the {} ("continuative form") of the copula which results in and falling nicely into this general rule:

> ( of something) + (optional ) + ( or )

Some other instances of this rule are ``````