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Mou and mada problems

TexMurphy01

先輩
25 Aug 2011
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Hi there.

I was at my Japanese lesson this evening, and I came across something in the text book for which my teacher could not provide an adequate explanation, so I return to this excellent forum in the hope of answers.

So, what's the problem? So you have 'mou' which you can use to start a question in which you ask if something has already occurred. Now here's how it went (as I recall):

Question -
Mou tabemashita ka - Have you eaten already?

Positive answer -
Mou tabemashita. - I have already eaten.

Negative answer -
Mada tabete imasen. - I have not yet eaten.

So, assuming both my memory and the textbook are reporting things accurately, why in the name of Jesus himself do we use the regular past tense for the positive response and the negative te iru form for the negative?

Please, if you have the answer, I would appreciate it if you took me through it nice and slowly for my head is not really able to get this.

Thanks in advance.
 
You can use -te iru for both, really. Since the first one is asking mou tabemashita ka, it's only natural to respond in kind. You could say mada tabemasen deshita if you're saing that you hadn't eaten at some point in the past, but you wouldn't say mou tabemasen deshita. I'm pretty sure that last one doesn't make any sense.
 
why in the name of Jesus himself do we use the regular past tense for the positive response and the negative te iru form for the negative?
Isn't the OP asking about the difference between the answers "mou tabemashita" and "mada tebeteimasen", i.e., the aspect issue?

"Mou tabemashita" expresses not the past tense but more likely the perfecr tense, as you translated correctly. The key is "mou". This adverb shows that the question "Mou tabemashita ka?" is asking whether or not an action "eating" is completed until now. Similarly, the positive answer "Mou tabemashita" expresses not just "ate", but expresses that it has a connection to the current state.(e.g. "I have eaten, so I'm not hungry now.") That's why the -te iru form, which expresses the current state, appears in the nagative answer.
Incidentally, if the question is "Kinou bangohan o tabemashita ka?(Did you have dinner yesterday?)", the negative answer is "Iie, tabemasen deshita". The -te iru form doesn't appear in this case, since the question is just asking about a past event. (If the answer is "Iie, tabeteimasen", it has a nuance of "so I'm hungry now" or like that.)

I think the OP should name a different title of this thread. It's a bit confusing.😌
 
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This is an excellent example of Toritoribe's mention of the pitfalls of the seemingly simple ている form.

It is easy to understand once one manages to break the notion of it being the present progressive "is --ing".
 
...the positive answer "Mou tabemashita" expresses not just "ate", but expresses that it has a connection to the current state.(e.g. "I have eaten, so I'm not hungry now.") That's why the -te iru form, which expresses the current state, appears in the nagative answer.

But couldn't you just as easily say mou tabeteimasu for "I've eaten, so I'm not hungry now"? In this case is there much of a difference between mou tabemasita and mou tabeteimasu?
 
Indeed, it's not impossible to answer "mou tabete imasu", but "mou tabemashita" is more common. "Mou tabete imasu" can be interpreted "mou tabe hajimete ite, ima tabete iru tokoro desu (I have already started eating, and am eating now)". Rather, this is the main use of "mou tabete imasu", since "~te iru" expresses the current state, as I already wrote, and the current state of a keizoku-doushi(durative verb) "taberu" usually refers to an ongoing action, i.e., the present progressive tense "to be eating".
 
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