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波紋ができていた

zuotengdazuo

Sempai
8 Dec 2019
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Hi. Please have a look at the underlined part?
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What is the difference between できていた and できた?
By the way, can we use できている here?
Thank you.
 
If it were できた, it would sound as if the ripple pattern in question formed at the moment the narrator looked at the sky, rather having already been there.

It's the same as 家に着くと、窓が開いていた versus 開いた. The former describes a situation where the window is already open when the speaker gets there. The latter would mean the window had been shut before and suddenly opened in that moment.

It could be できている if you wanted to shift the tense to the present, e.g. to create that sense of immediacy or what-have-you as has been mentioned throughout this discussion.
 
I'm curious again whether you had any problem with まるでゴーストタウンのようになっていた in the same page. Can you get the difference between なっていた and なった, and can you judge yourself if you can use なっている there?
 
Thank you both. I see.
I'm curious again whether you had any problem with まるでゴーストタウンのようになっていた in the same page. Can you get the difference between なっていた and なった, and can you judge yourself if you can use なっている there?
Yes, I do have problems with that. You are sharp-eyed. Originally I wanted to ask it later. Now that you mention it, can I think benten-san's explanation also apply to まるでゴーストタウンのようになっていた? When the protagonist looked at the 大通り, it had already been (in a state of being) like a ghost town?
 
Yes, it's the same. If it were なった, that would suggest that it transformed from not-a-ghost-town into a ghost town at/in that very moment, which of course would be a very unusual thing (and something that the author would probably choose to describe in more dramatic terms if that were the intended meaning).
 
Yes, and therefore まるでゴーストタウンのようになった doesn't fit the preceding clause しかし当然のごとく人の姿はなく、, which suggests the state "a ghost town" already existed previously.
cf.
しかし突然人の姿はなくなり、まるでゴーストタウンのようになった。
 
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