Learning Japanese through Translation

[Zizka]

Hello Majestic,
I like the way you explained things, it was very clear to me. I think I now understand
「やる」fairly well. In fact, in the example you've provided, 「やる」has no grammatical value, it's purpose is strictly to influence the tone of the verb. It's clear.

Regarding Q2: I was under the impression that 「やる」wasn't necessary so that just confirms it.

Regarding Q3: my question wasn't clear.
Why not simply say:「教えるやる」 . Why is the ーて form necessary here? That's what i was trying to ask. It's not used to link sentences and it doesn't express the progressive because it's not used with 「いる」 . Those are the two sole purposes described in A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar for the ーて form.
So basically, I understand that 「やる」does, but I don't understand why 「教える」 should be written in the ーて form here. If it has already been explained, please refer to the post so you guys don't need to repeat the same thing again.

 

[Toritoribe]

Q1:「何を読んでいる」would I be right in calling いる an auxiliary here?

Yes, the verbs attached to the -te form is categorized as "auxiliary verb" in Japanese grammar, e.g., ～ている/ある, ～ておく, ～ていく/くる, ～てやる/あげる/もらう/くれる, ～てしまう, ～てみる/みせる, etc.. These auxiliary verbs are already lost the meaning the original verb has, or have special meaning the original doesn't have, similar to "have" in English I mentioned here.

A similar form "the -masu stem of verbs + verb" also exists, e.g. ～だす/でる, ～かける/かかる, ～おえる/おわる, ～あげる/あがる. These verbs are called 後項動詞 "second compound verb". As the name shows, these are compound verbs, i.e., it expresses an action as a set.
e.g.
取り出す: to take something out from somewhere
言いかける: to be about to say
食べ終わる: to finish eating

These second compound verbs can be connected only to specific verbs, thus, there is limitation about the combination of the two verbs. On the other hand, the ones attached to the -te form can be connected to many verbs relatively freely. Therefore these ones are considered "auxiliary verb".

The point is that you shouldn't analyze the meaning of these "-te form + auxiliary verb" or compound verbs from the original verbs. It's useless to think that 歩いている is "to walk and exist". It's "to be walking" as a set, even though the meaning is originally from "to start walking, and then exist in the state of that", since the -te form is used to connect two clauses in the temporal order. You don't think "to be walking" is "to be/exist" and "to walk" in English, right? The same goes to compound verbs. You'd never get the meaning "to be about to say" from "言う + かける".

By the way, this -masu stem is not "gerund", i.e., a noun. The -masu stem also can be used to connect clauses as same as the -te form.
e.g.
ボタンを押して、薬をそそいでください ＝ ボタンを押し、薬をそそいでください


I found a thread regarding "modifying (= attributive/relative) clause" I replied before. Hope this helps.
Participial construction | Japan Forum

 

[mdchachi]

Regarding Q3: my question wasn't clear.
Why not simply say:「教えるやる」 . Why is the ーて form necessary here? That's what i was trying to ask. It's not used to link sentences and it doesn't express the progressive because it's not used with 「いる」 . Those are the two sole purposes described in A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar for the ーて form.
So basically, I understand that 「やる」does, but I don't understand why 「教える」 should be written in the ーて form here. If it has already been explained, please refer to the post so you guys don't need to repeat the same thing again.

The answer to this is very simple. It's because V + V is not grammatical. Verbs can't be linked that way.

 

[Zizka]

@Toritoribe :
Great post!
Just to clarify though; my analysis regarding 教えてやる isn't so much that I'm trying to understand the exact meaning 教えて & やる as separate entities. I just don't get why the ーて form is used with in the sentence. やる I understand. I mean, there has to be a reason the ーて form is used in that sentence/context.
That's essentially what I'd like to know.

 

[Zizka]

Main thing you need to do is read up on your giving/receiving verbs and how all that works. There are many differences from English.

I think I have a good understanding of this actually, having read a fair deal about this.
Here's my take on it based on GJG and DBJG.
「あげる」: means "to give" from the speaker's point of view. In other words, you use that verb when you are the one doing the giving.
「私は友達にプレゼントをあげた。」
「やる」: has already been covered and from I understand, isn't used very often.
「くれる」: is the "opposite" of 「あげる」in the sense that it's used when someone else is giving something for the speaker.
「友達が私にプレセントをくれた。」
Incidentally when I was reviewing this aspect of the language, I stumbled upon this:
"In order to express the giving of a favor (verb) you must use the ever useful ーて form and then attach 「あげる」."
That immediately reminded me of:おしえてやる that I was trying to understand. I think this is exactly what this is. In other words, I've answered my own question: the ーて form + やる for that very reason: giving of a favor. It's pretty simple all things considered.

 

[Toritoribe]

That's exactly what I already pointed out in the following post.

やる in 殺してやる or おしえてやる is an auxiliary verb, adding a nuance of "give a favor of doing" to the verb preceding it.
Learning Japanese through Translation | Page 6 | Japan Forum

Anyway, here's my reply I've just written.
The -te form expresses various aspects of action. For instance, in the present progressive 食べている, 食べて shows that the action "eat" was already started, and is in the state now, i.e, "is eating". On the other hand, 来ている shows that the action "come" was already completed, and is in the state now. The difference is not always from the types of verb such like punctual or durative. 食べて shows the action is completed in もう食べている, thus, the meaning is also affected by the context.

As for your question 教えてやる, it's reasonable to interpret that the -te form means the action "teach" is completed, and then gives it to the addressee.

By the way, how do you explain if a non-native English learner asks you the reason why the past participle form is used with "have" in the perfect tense? You might be able to explain the reason correctly, but I believe it would be far more useful for learners to know what the perfect tense "have + past participle" expresses or in what situation it's used. You'd better to think that ～てやる/あげる means "to give a favor of doing" as a set, as I wrote repeatedly.

And here's a thread about やりもらい動詞.
Please help me understand these two sentences! ～てもらう、～てくれる | Japan Forum

 

[Zizka]

That's exactly what I already pointed out in the following post.

:emoji_face_palm::emoji_grinning: Sorry Toritoribe! For some reason it didn't click until I read it in my book even though you did write it. Go figure!

For instance, in the present progressive 食べている, 食べて shows that the action "eat" was already started, and is in the state now, i.e, "is eating". On the other hand, 来ている shows that the action "come" was already completed, and is in the state now.

Yes, I understand that part. I've read that in DBJG about the usage of ーて and how it has different functions depending with which verb that form is used in combination with いる/ある.

As for your question 教えてやる, it's reasonable to interpret that the -te form means the action "teach" is completed, and then gives it to the addressee.

Yup, that's one way to see things.

By the way, how do you explain if a non-native English learner asks you the reason why the past participle form is used with "have" in the perfect tense?

It's probably a rhetorical question but still: I'd explain that "do", "have" and "be" are primal verbs. This means they can someone times play an auxiliary role and at other times plain play a main verb role depending on the context they're used in.
Then I'd explain the purpose of the primal verbs when used as auxiliary and their purpose/meaning as main verbs with some examples to show the difference in a compare/contrast sort of approach.

"have + past participle" expresses or in what situation it's used. You'd better to think that ～てやる/あげる means "to give a favor of doing" as a set, as I wrote repeatedly.

I think it's good to know how the ーて form functions in different contexts by giving various examples to compare. I mean, you can say that the ーて form+いる expresses a progressive without explaining what the ーて form means in that construction. Just like you can explain what ーて+やる is used for without covering what the ーて form means as half of that unit. What I couldn't understand here was why the ーて form was used with やる which turns out to do a favor just like explaining ーて +いる expresses the progressive.

Anyways, all is well that ends well as I know understand the concept of giving and giving a favor in Japanese.
*

「ゆうふくなものたちが すむ街
駅の近くにいる きん色のものに
せいいを 見せている オタシが 見えます。」
I've fixed the original script. I actually can't see which katakana I've misidentified. The
「モノ/もの」is accurate. The only katakana left are 「オタシ」. Also, it's definitely 「シ」and not「ツ」. It's also a 「が」 and not 「カ」.
*
So as usual, I'll stick to a few questions instead of asking too many at once. Actually I think we could maybe to refer to "Extended Sentential Units (ESU)" as discussed on p.612 of DJG. It was a revelation for me to read about that yesterday. The dictionary provides 7 guidelines to identify ESU. To clarify, an ESU is defined as a:
"[...] modifier+modified an Extended Sentential Unit (=ESU).
To give you an idea:
Guideline: a modified element is typically a noun, a head noun of a relative clause, a nominalizer の/こと, a coordinate or a subordinate conjunction (such as "ga" but, "kara" because, "keredomo" although), a modal... etc...
*
Here's my question this time regarding 「すむ街」.
I looked up 「街」again in the dictionary to see if I hadn't missed anything. It can be used as a suffix so maybe that's it.
「すむ」, from what I can tell, can only mean a verb, either:
「澄む」、「済む」、「住む」or「棲む」. Those are all in the "dictionary form" here used in combination with 「街」, a noun. I would hypothesize that 「すむ」is 「住む」. So it's living in a city. I just want to understand the inner workings of this.

 

[Zizka]

Regarding:
「ゆうふくない」
I misread the excerpt as:

I misread it because I included the 「く」of the suffix as being part of the actual word when it's actually the inf., neg., non-past of an 「い」 adjective. Since the negative of an 「い」adjective is to remove the trailing 「い」and replace it with 「くない」, ゆうふくない would shift to 「ゆうふい」which is not a word which refers to any adjective I could find. So I thought this is likely a combination of two words, one of them being a 「い」adjective.

 

[Toritoribe]

The whole clause "ゆうふくなものたちが すむ" modifies 街.
There still is a misreading in オタシ.
Try again.

 

[Zizka]

Ahh ok.

The first one is definitely オ.
The third one is definitely シ.
Ah ok, I know where I made a mistake, it's タ which was ヌ.
So it's オヌシ.

The whole clause "ゆうふくなものたちが

so that's why jt_ was referring:

Likewise, in Xが住む街, 街 is being described/modified by Xが住む.
Do these explanations help your understanding at all?

So
「ゆうふくなものたちが すむ街」is one ESU.
I still don't understand that part in bold though like I said previously:

So I thought this is likely a combination of two words, one of them being a 「い」adjective.

So it's hard to understand that ESU at the moment since I can't figure out the part in bold.

 

[Zizka]

Regarding and my misunderstanding of it:
「なにもしらない」
「なにも」: means ''nothing''.
「しらない」: is negative of 「知る」, ''to know''.
So: ''to do nothing''.
Since it looks like there's nothing you don't know...
Should therefore be:
Since it looks like you know nothing.
*
I want to dwell a bit further in this:

I used the term 終止形 since I thought "the form used at the end of non-polite sentences(more precisely, including past, negative, past negative, etc.) " would be easier to understand for you.

So 「終止形」refers to the predicative form which means the form used at the end of non-polite sentences.
Whereas 「連体形」is rather used in attributive clauses.

However, 終止形 and 連体形 are completely the same in modern Japanese, so I chose 終止形.

How can they be the same? What do you mean by "same" here? I mean, based on the definitions you've provided, they're clearly different. I mean, they might be written the same but will change categories depending on where they are used in a sentence, right?

See 語形 (かく, うける, おきる,,,) are the same as 終止形 (well, except 形容動詞 "na-adjective"), but these two forms are not always the same in the left category 文語 (= classical Japanese).

I checked both links and I see what you mean (as far as how it's written).

 

[joadbres]

I still don't understand that part in bold though like I said previously

@jt_ already fully explained this for you in his most recent post.

 

[Zizka]

Do you mean this:

Likewise, in Xが住む街, 街 is being described/modified by Xが住む.
Do these explanations help your understanding at all?

I understand that:
「ゆうふくなものたちが すむ街」the part in green is attributive to 「街」.
My questions regarding 「すむ」 and 「ゆうふくない」remain though.

 

[joadbres]

裕福 is what's called a な adjective or "adjectival noun". It connects to nouns with な, so 裕福なX means, simply, "(a) wealthy X".

Edit: In the text「ゆうふくなものたちがすむ街」, 「ゆうふく」is a single noun, and 「な」 is a grammatical construct.

 

[Majestic]

裕福＋な
That's all there is.
Yūfuku is a discrete word, becoming an adjective when you add +な .

It is a different grammatical concept from the く and く＋ない adjectives.
You are getting thrown off because the root word ends in く and you are associating that with a different type of adjective.

 

[Zizka]

Yes, that's what I was asking about.
I misread as it turns out. I saw an「い」which wasn't there in the original script. I understand now.
So back to what I wasn't saying before then:
ゆうふくな = 裕福: affluence, prosperity.
so:
ゆうふくなものたちが = many prosperous people (or things) followed by the particle 「が」, a subject indicator.

My other questions still remains however namely:

Here's my question this time regarding 「すむ街」.
I looked up 「街」again in the dictionary to see if I hadn't missed anything. It can be used as a suffix so maybe that's it.
「すむ」, from what I can tell, can only mean a verb, either:
「澄む」、「済む」、「住む」or「棲む」. Those are all in the "dictionary form" here used in combination with 「街」, a noun. I would hypothesize that 「すむ」is 「住む」. So it's living in a city. I just want to understand the inner workings of this.

How is it possible to have a dictionary form verb before a noun? I understand it defines 「街」probably in the sense of living there but how?

 

[Majestic]

The whole phrase modifies 街
Q: What kind of town is it?
A: It is a town where affluent people live.
Sometimes it is easier to understand when you put the sentence in reverse order. In English, the descriptive part comes at the end of the sentence. In Japanese, the descriptive part comes before the word that is being described.
Edit: maybe the space just before すむ街 was throwing you off. The whole sentence should be understood as one phrase. The space is unnecessary, but might exist to help young Japanese kids sort out the sentence.

 

[Zizka]

Yes, I understand but that's not what I meant. I guess it doesn't really matter that much but that 住む＋街 is bothering me for some reason. I know that 「住む」 means to reside somewhere. I would've expected a 「に」 there to be used in combination with 「住む」and 「街」.

 

[joadbres]

Yes, I understand but that's not what I meant. I guess it doesn't really matter that much but that 住む＋街 is bothering me for some reason. I know that 「住む」 means to reside somewhere. I would've expected a 「に」 there to be used in combination with 「住む」and 「街」.

You've already seen this within some of the sentences you've studied earlier:

空中に ふわふわ うかぶ 街

かいだんを のぼった先にあるトビラ

and in these other phrases which also have a verb directly preceding a noun, but in a form other than the "dictionary form":

トビラの 近くに はられている紙

ビーカーが とまった 場所

セットサレタ クスリ

 

[mdchachi]

Yes, I understand but that's not what I meant. I guess it doesn't really matter that much but that 住む＋街 is bothering me for some reason. I know that 「住む」 means to reside somewhere. I would've expected a 「に」 there to be used in combination with 「住む」and 「街」.

町に住む = reside in town
住む町 = town that is resided in
Nothing odd about that but I'm more puzzled by why 街 is followed by 駅 without any connecting particle. I don't think 街駅 is a word. Seems like there should be a に after 街 to me.

 

[bentenmusume]

町に住む = reside in town
I'm more puzzled by why 街 is followed by 駅 without any connecting particle. I don't think 街駅 is a word. Seems like there should be a に after 街 to me.

Given the context, the first bit is pretty clearly a fragment, with an implied break and the rest of the dialogue box continuing that thought as a new sentence.

ゆうふくなモノたちがすむ街。
<break>
（その街の←implied）駅の近くにいる, etc.

How is it possible to have a dictionary form verb before a noun? I understand it defines 「街」probably in the sense of living there but how?

Note that "a dictionary form verb before a noun" (or, more broadly and accurately speaking, "the plain form of a predicate before a noun" is precisely the construction used to form relative clauses in Japanese, as explained in this earlier post of mine:

Learning Japanese through Translation | Page 3 | Japan Forum

...and the numerous examples provided by joadbresさん.

I would've expected a 「に」 there to be used in combination with 「住む」and 「街」.

mdchachiさん, joadbresさん, and Majesticさん have already explained this to various degrees, but to further drive home the concept, please remember that case particles in Japanese mark the noun (or noun phrase) that _precedes_ them.

Xが住む marks X as the grammatical subject of 住む, hence "X lives (somewhere)".
Yに住む marks Y as the location where the living occurs, hence "(someone or something) lives in Y."

Also note that Japanese (unlike English) does not require the subject to be explicitly stated to make a sentence or clause grammatical.

「東京に住んでいる。」 (here, 住む is in the ～ている describing an ongoing state) is a complete sentence that is a perfectly natural way of saying "(I) live in Tokyo."

This quality of Japanese where subjects can be easily omitted makes it all the more important that you are able to identify how each particle is being used and how words are connected to each other. If you're thinking in vague terms like "the sentence is about living, which implies a location, so there should be a に somewhere," you're going to get tripped up very, very easily.

Hope this helps.

 

[Zizka]

空中に ふわふわ うかぶ 街

かいだんを のぼった先にあるトビラ

See, to me, they don't represent the same construction. The first one does but not the second one.

A comparison with a previous comment:
Q1:「すしを食べる人」and 「うかぶ 街」; in both cases, the dictionary form of a verb is used as part an attributive phrase which describes a noun; 「人」in the first example and 「街」in the second one. If this what there is to it, then I understand. For some reason something really made me tilt about that part of the sentence.

Q2:
「ゆうふくなものたちが すむ街
駅の近くにいる きん色のものに
せいいを 見せている オタシが 見えます。」

Xが住む marks X as the grammatical subject of 住む, hence "X lives (somewhere)".

See, I would've thought that the が助詞 here would indicate that the whole excerpt is about what precedes the particle because there are no punctuation marks to indicate that there are many sentences here.
So this means Japanese isn't as reliant on punctuation as English is as it can be omitted.
I would have thought that the が in this context meant that about
「ゆうふくなものたち」the speaker was seeing 「すむ街
駅の近くにいる きん色のものに
せいいを 見せている オタシが」
So:

Xが住む marks X as the grammatical subject of 住む, hence "X lives (somewhere)".

Yes, but it also marks the subject of 「すむ街
駅の近くにいる きん色のものに
せいいを 見せている オタシが」
Correct?

 

[Toritoribe]

It's probably a rhetorical question but still: I'd explain that "do", "have" and "be" are primal verbs. This means they can someone times play an auxiliary role and at other times plain play a main verb role depending on the context they're used in.
Then I'd explain the purpose of the primal verbs when used as auxiliary and their purpose/meaning as main verbs with some examples to show the difference in a compare/contrast sort of approach.

You asked the function/meaning of the -te form, not auxiliary verbs やる or いる, so it's equivalent to the reason why the past participle form is used, not "have" or "be". Thus, you need to explain why the past participle form expresses the perfect tense when used with "have", or why the same form expresses the passive voice when used with "be". Is this kind of linguistic information really useful for beginner learners?

How can they be the same? What do you mean by "same" here? I mean, based on the definitions you've provided, they're clearly different.

There is a historical background. Those two forms are different in ancient Japanese (roughly until Heian period ), as in the wiki pages I linked, but significant changes happened in Japanese language in the middle age, for instance, the functions of が and の were exchanged with each other (が used to be the possession marker, and の was the subject marker), euphonic changes happened in the conjugation forms (書きた --> 書いた, 飲みた --> 飲んだ).
One of these changes was that 連体形 became to be used at the end of sentences instead of 終止形, and as a result of that, classical 終止形 became obsolete after all. Thus, more precisely, it's not "終止形 is used to modify nouns", but "連体形 is used as the predicate at the end of sentence".
As I already wrote, school grammar also treats classical Japanese, so these two categories still remain in the conjugation table even though they are completely the same in modern Japanese. There is no need to distinguish them in modern Japanese.

「なにも」: means ''nothing''.

Note that なにも doesn't mean "nothing" just by this word alone. This word is used only in negative sentences, so actually なにも～ない means "nothing" as a set.
e.g.
なにも持っていない。
I have nothing.
彼はなにもできなかった。
He couldn't do anything.

In contrast, なんでも is used in affirmative sentences.
e.g.
なんでも持っている。
I have everything.
彼はなんでもできた。
He could do everything.

I would've expected a 「に」 there to be used in combination with 「住む」and 「街」.

ビーカーがとまった場所 is the same construction. 場所 is the location where the beaker has stopped, so it's indicated by に in the sentence. Or, even other examples you came across, the subject marker が is not there. You've never had doubts about it, just because you didn't realize it.

ビーカーが場所にとまった --> ビーカーがとまった場所
紙がトビラの近くにはられている --> トビラの近くにはられている紙

And you can see all the particles are unnecessary in my examples in this post I already provided.

Yes, but it also marks the subject of 「すむ街
駅の近くにいる きん色のものに
せいいを 見せている オタシが」
Correct?

Not correct. The subject of 見えます is not ゆうふくなものたち. Those are two sentences (the first line is just a noun clause, not a complete sentence, though), as jt_-san wrote.

 

[Zizka]

This word is used only in negative sentences, so actually なにも～ない means "nothing" as a set.

Ah ok so it's not a double negative then so:
なにも持っていない。
Isn't: I don't have nothing (therefore I have something).

Is this kind of linguistic information really useful for beginner learners?

Well, it's interesting to be aware of it I'd say.

There is no need to distinguish them in modern Japanese.

I feel like this is more peripheral to the language so I won't pursue this further with more questions at this point in time but it's still unclear to me.

「ゆうふくなものたちが すむ街
駅の近くにいる。」 「きん色のものに
せいいを 見せている オタシが 見えます。」

hose are two sentences

I could have sworn you had posted a message where the other period would technically make it two sentences show up. I can't find it just now so I added my own.

How can I better determine the beginning/end of sentences if I can't count on punctuation?

 

[Toritoribe]

I already gave a way to determine it.

いる: non-polite
見せている: non-polite
見えます: polite

The problem is that you are using a game that is not using any comma or period as a learning material. It's just not suitable to you.