How to handle situations when it is ambiguous whether ～られる is potential or passive?

Question

I already took a look at this question and it says that context is the king. But I wonder what to do in situations when it is still ambiguous whether ～られる is potential or passive?

For example, from Konosuba chapter 3:

絶大な魔力と魔法防御を持ち通常の武器では傷一つつけられません

I feel like it doesn't matter whether to interpret つけられません as potential or passive. This means both interpretations are acceptable? But I am still not sure how to handle this ambiguity. Should I choose one interpretation and move on? Perhaps I should try to understand the base meaning of つけられません. How passive and potential forms are related to each other?

Answer 1

• 傷つく: to be hurt
• 傷つける: to hurt (someone)
• 傷つけられる: to be hurt / can hurt (someone)

There is already a common intransitive verb 傷つく ("to be wounded/hurt"), so we seldom say 傷つけられる in the passive sense unless you want to express the nuance of 迷惑 explicitly. Although it's fine to say あなたの言葉に傷つけられた ("I was hurt by your words"), リッチーが武器で傷つけられた sounds unnecessarily sympathetic to the monster in this context, so such a passive interpretation makes little sense.

Natural expressions in this context include:

• (リッチーは)通常の武器では傷一つつきません。
• (我々はリッチーを)通常の武器では傷つけられません。
• (我々はリッチーに)通常の武器では傷一つつけられません。

This also means there is an implicit subject change in the sentence in question, but this is very common in Japanese, and native speakers don't even notice the change has occurred.