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Slight disclaimer. I did read the following post, Meaning of に in ~にできる , but did not see it's reasoning directly translating to my sentence.

Here is sentence in question:

「五つ子だからミクにできることは他の四人にもできる。」

So the speaker is saying that since these girls are quintuplets, if one of them can do something, then the rest of them should be able to do it too. I've seen that にする can mean "to decide on something" or "to make" and できる is the potential form of する, but I can't see how that would work here. What is it that the girls can do/make? How does に as a the location particle work here?

Any help would be much appreciated. I feel that there is something that has gone unsaid here and I can't put my finger on it.

EDIT. Or is all what comes in front of こと just a descriptive clause and what she can do/make is the abstract こと?

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Because they are quintuplets, anything Miku can do, the other four can also do. The に should be used in a similar sense to にする, and こと is exactly as you say.

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  • Thanks. Perhaps that leads to a different question though which is how does に、a location/target marker, function with する to mean make/decide. I guess deciding ON something makes sense but I'm not sure about its notion of "making." Maybe I'm just overthinking things. Aug 29, 2019 at 1:29
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    Explains it pretty well. japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/2289/…
    – hikaru1412
    Aug 29, 2019 at 1:39
  • Woah. This was eye opening. Thank you! Aug 29, 2019 at 1:42
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    No, not that. "~に+potential form" in question is this: japanese.stackexchange.com/q/4440/9831
    – Chocolate
    Aug 29, 2019 at 3:08

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