今日はコーヒーしか飲んでいないから、とてもお腹が空いています。

[healer]

I understand the latter part of the sentence is a state and I don't think the former is a state.
I am not too sure why the former needs to be in a present continuous tense.
Can't we simply say "今日はコーヒーしか飲まなかったから" instead of "今日はコーヒーしか飲んでいないから"?

 

[Toritoribe]

コーヒーしか飲まなかった is a simple past event, whereas コーヒーしか飲んでいない implies that the past event still affects the present state. So, it more suits to the context "I only drank coffee today, because of that, I'm very hungry now."

 

[healer]

Thanks.
I had presumed the past continuous tense is for event that continued for a period of time and had stopped or finished in the past. Now I guess the past continuous tense in Japanese language is the same as that of the English language in that one has been doing.

The simple past tense in Japanese language is for event that happened in the past and has stopped or finished, isn't it?
However I do have some difficulty to get my head around something like "I'm hungry" but expressed in past tense. I remember in Japanese I'm supposed to say お腹が空いた while I would still be hungry.

 

[Toritoribe]

I had presumed the past continuous tense is for event that continued for a period of time and had stopped or finished in the past.

Yes, that's right. Notice that 飲んでいない is the preset tense. The past progressive tense is 飲んでいなかった.

The simple past tense in Japanese language is for event that happened in the past and has stopped or finished, isn't it?
However I do have some difficulty to get my head around something like "I'm hungry" but expressed in past tense. I remember in Japanese I'm supposed to say お腹が空いた while I would still be hungry.

You can think that that's the perfect tense. If you want to emphasize that you are hungry now, お腹が空いている is used.

Incidentally, the temporal order of events in punctual verbs are "-ta --> -te iru (e.g. 結婚した --> 結婚している)", whereas durative verb is "-te iru --> -ta (食べている --> 食べた)".

 

[healer]

I understand that 結婚している is a present state while 結婚していた is an action in the past.
I'm not too sure how to express one in the process of getting married.
For example: "The priest is marrying the couple" and "I'm getting married."
The latter could refer to "in the middle of marriage ceremony 結婚式中??" or the time leading to the marriage.

 

[Toritoribe]

Many learners have the same question.

なっている

Hi, so this is something I've been wondering some time. I know that the ～ている form generally speaking means one of two things: 1. For actions that take some time to perform, that the action is currently in progress and ongoing (e.g. 作っている -> "making"). 2. For actions that are more or less...

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