与えられん / 蘇らせん / 間

Hi,

「父親の骨、知らぬ間に与えられん。父親は息子を蘇らせん！」
「しもべの——肉、——よ、喜んで差し出されん。——しもべは——ご主人様を蘇らせん」

1. I cannot understand the verb forms 与えられん, 蘇らせん and 差し出されん. What are these? They do not seem to be negatives.

2. In what sense is 間 meant?

You've never seen 〜ない shortened to ん before?

あいだ interval, period of time

知らない間 roughly= when I wasn't paying attention / when I wasn't looking / before I knew it

Like that

1)
Yes, those are not negative. ん is a classical auxiliary verb for presumptive (the etymology of ～う/よう/ろう in modern Japanese). Those are equivalent to 与えられるだろう, 蘇らせるだろう and 差し出されるだろう, respectively.

2)
Yeah, 間 refers to "time period", and 知らぬ間に means 知らないうちに.

ま【間】
1 〔時間〕
休む間もない
I have no time to rest.
そうこうしている間に
in the meantime
1万円なんかあっという間に使ってしまう
One spends ten thousand yen in no time.／Ten thousand yen disappears in no time.
間をおいて答えた
He answered after a short pause.
彼らは結婚して間がない
They have not been married long.／They have only just been married.

Click to expand...

ま【間】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

Toritoribe said:

1)
Yes, those are not negative. ん is a classical auxiliary verb for presumptive (the etymology of ～う/よう/ろう in modern Japanese). Those are equivalent to 与えられるだろう, 蘇らせるだろう and 差し出されるだろう, respectively.

Click to expand...

Thanks but yikes. Is this not incredibly confusing? How is one supposed to know whether it is this meaning or a negative meaning?

From collocation, meaning, personality of the speaker, etc, i.e., from the context, as always. For instance, 知らぬ間には与えられん is always negative. (This is spoken language, not written language.) Furthermore, the writer/speaker would use ぬ or ず for negative and む for presumptive if it's really confusing.

In addition to ん for presumptive, this auxiliary verb also can express the speaker's will when used with volitional verbs, so 蘇らせん can mean 蘇らそう "to be going to revive ~". (It's similar to the auxiliary verb "will" in English, right?)