Hi! Me again. I thought I'd start a new thread for the overlap into past paper questions that I don't understand. Hopefully this will be useful for anyone who is preparing for the N2 test in 5 weeks.

To start the thread off, I have two questions:

ゆうべ徹夜(てつや)したので、______。

１．眠くないではいられない ２．眠いものではない ３．眠くてはいられない ４．眠くてしょうがない

Could this not be (1) as much as (4)?

こんな単純な作業を３時間も続けるのは、つらい______。

１．くらいだ ２．ものがある ３．あまりだ ４．ほかない

Don't both (2) and (3) make sense here?

Where did you find the past exam paper? I think there are a few of us that would love a copy

stevesayskanpai Wrote:ゆうべ徹夜(てつや)したので、______。

１．眠くないではいられない ２．眠いものではない ３．眠くてはいられない ４．眠くてしょうがない

Could this not be (1) as much as (4)?

Vないではいられない meaning "can't help Ving" only works with verbs. 眠い here is an adjective. You could have 眠らないではいられない from 眠る, which gets a modest number of google hits.

Quote:こんな単純な作業を３時間も続けるのは、つらい______。

１．くらいだ ２．ものがある ３．あまりだ ４．ほかない

Don't both (2) and (3) make sense here?

Three reasons why あまり doesn't work here:

(1) This sort of あまり takes verbs (将来を思うあまり), nouns (驚きのあまり) and na-adjectives (熱心なあまり) but not i-adjectives. You'd have to turn it into a noun, like つらさのあまり or 忙しさのあまり.
(2) The "classic" pattern for あまり is as a kind of adverbial clause, as in 驚きのあまり、声も出なかった "I was so surprised I couldn't speak", where the following phrase describes the effects of the excess of whatever-it-is. あまり at the end of a sentence is rather rarer (eg google has 8000 hits for つらさのあまり and none for つらさのあまりだ.)
(3) It means "extreme", "an excess of", so meaning-wise it's out of place here. Doing something simple and mind-numbing for three hours is kind of painful, not incredibly painful (unless you're being sarcastic, which the JLPT test setters generally are not).