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- せてほしい - mottles - 2011-06-23

Hi all,

I was wondering for a phrase, given no other context, like this:
聴かせて欲しい

Does this mean I want you to make me listen, or I want to make you listen?

Thanks

- せてほしい - wccrawford - 2011-06-23

You need context. English typically doesn't need any other context (unless someone is making word games) but Japanese isn't like that. You could put anything on the front of that and make it apply to that.

- せてほしい - SendaiDan - 2011-06-23

I would've thought it meant "I want you to let me listen." In other words "I want you to tell me"

- せてほしい - wccrawford - 2011-06-23

Or "You want me to listen." Or "He wants me to listen." Or...

Really, without context, it can mean anything.

- せてほしい - JimmySeal - 2011-06-23

I don't think this really needs any more context. It means "I want you to tell me" or "I want you to let me hear it"
There isn't any way it could be construed to mean "I want to make you listen", "You want me to listen" or "He wants me to listen."

"You want me to listen" or "He wants me to listen" would be "聴いてほしい" or "聴いてほしがっている"

"I want to make you listen" would be 聴かせたい

- せてほしい - Tzadeck - 2011-06-23

It could also mean "I want you to tell us"; "I want you to tell her"; etc.

I'm pretty sure you can also use it for a person not present, right? "I want him to tell her", etc.

With no context it sounds like "I want you to tell me."

- せてほしい - JimmySeal - 2011-06-23

Yes, there could be some variation in the direct and indirect objects.

- せてほしい - yudantaiteki - 2011-06-23

The important thing to remember about てほしい is that it cannot refer to your own desire for your action/state -- that is, 分かってほしい can only mean "I want [you?] to understand", it cannot mean "I want to understand" regardless of context. This is very important to understand because the subjects and objects will very frequently be dropped in this expression.

It's true that Japanese requires context to determine meaning more than some other languages, but that doesn't mean that any phrase can mean anything. It's very important to recognize what the range of meaning of an expression is before you take context into account. So it's technically true that in やってもらいたい事がある, we don't know exactly who wants who to do something. But we do know that (a) it's almost certainly the speaker who wants the thing done, and (b) this cannot mean that the speaker wants to do something themselves.

It's also important to know what is the most likely possibility because Japanese doesn't just drop subjects/objects when it's 100% impossible for any other interpretation, it often does it just for the most likely one. So 聴かせてほしい is technically ambiguous, but the most likely interpretation is "I want you to tell me", so subjects and objects will probably be provided only if it means something different from that.

- せてほしい - nest0r - 2011-06-23

Seems like you can infer that it's first person (see DoBJG entry on ほしい in declarative sentences—ほしい[2], that is) with the causative て-form = ‘(please) let me ~’ (p. 239 JMW), and the person being referred to is equal or lower in social status.

A second simpler interpretation of てほしい is given on p. 184 of JMW, “please [do the action]”:

結婚してほしい。
けっこん　してほしい
marriage　want [you] to do
I want you to marry [me].
Please marry me. (PL2)

- せてほしい - Asriel - 2011-06-23

I agree with yudan in that it has to be the speaker who wants the action done. I would say it's "i want you to tell me," unless it's something like music, in which case it'd be "i want you to let me listen."
The させる form isn't always 'make,' it can also be 'let,' but that's neither here nor there.

Kind of an aside regarding -たい vs　-たがる: I thought たい could only express the speaker's want, and you should use -たがる when talking about others' desires (unless it's a quote ie. -たいって). Is this right?

- せてほしい - yudantaiteki - 2011-06-23

More or less. たい can reflect the speaker's want, or the person you are talking to if it's in a question (i.e. 食べたいんですか？) It can refer to another person's wants as long as it has anything marking it as reported information, opinion, probability, a question, etc. So 彼が食べたいだろう is fine. This is a general rule for any word that describes a feeling, not just たい.

Thinking of てほしい as "please" can be dangerous; it's typically not used to make a request of someone; it shouldn't be just substituted for てください and the like.

- せてほしい - nest0r - 2011-06-23

Yes, I thought that was a bit awkward; that section came right after the usual てほしい stuff on the page previous, and I was thinking he must've meant a variant of please more akin to a desperate/selfish plea, or somesuch, or a way of translating based on specific contexts. Not sure why it deserved its own section.

Also, would we be tempted to interpret the construction differently if it was 聞かせてほしい rather than 聴かせてほしい?

- せてほしい - yudantaiteki - 2011-06-23

Probably not. 聴く vs. 聞く is one of those things that isn't well-defined; while the use of 聴く may indicate some attempt at differentiating meaning, the use of 聞く can just mean that someone uses that one all the time.

- せてほしい - Tori-kun - 2011-06-23

yudantaiteki Wrote:More or less. たい can reflect the speaker's want, or the person you are talking to if it's in a question (i.e. 食べたいんですか？) It can refer to another person's wants as long as it has anything marking it as reported information, opinion, probability, a question, etc. So 彼が食べたいだろう is fine. This is a general rule for any word that describes a feeling, not just たい.
Slightly confused. I would have thought the same as Asriel, that ~tai is mainly used for one's own wishes/desires and ~tagaru for somebody else's (do you say that in English??) desires. I found the "s.o. is showing signs of wanting to do s.th." for ~tagaru always a bit awkward.. For some reason I would not say 食べたがっていますか - dunno why? Yudantaiteki, does your "general rule" only apply to questions like 食べたいですか?

I've heard using the the ~tai form to ask someone sounds slightly greedy like "Oh, you (still) want to eat something..." or "Oh, you want to eat something (but actually I would not like you to eat more of it.. coz I'm greedy)".

- せてほしい - yudantaiteki - 2011-06-23

I'm a little confused by what you're confused about, haha. A -tai form, by itself, generally refers to your own wants. You can use it in a question about someone else's wants, but this does tend to be a more blunt question than in English (and in particular, you cannot use 食べたい？ as an invitation like "Do you want to eat?" in English.)

If a -tai form is going to be used with a third person, you can use -tagaru if they are showing signs of the want. Otherwise you can just use a more general "maybe" like だろう or かもしれない.

- せてほしい - iSoron - 2011-06-23

Tori-kun Wrote:Slightly confused. I would have thought the same as Asriel, that ~tai is mainly used for one's own wishes/desires and ~tagaru for somebody else's (do you say that in English??) desires.
Some examples where たい does not refer to the speaker's wishes:

・ 聞きたい事があったら質問してください。
・ 言いたいなら言えばいい。
・ 何かしたいと思っている方へ
・ そんなに帰りたくない？

- せてほしい - Asriel - 2011-06-23

Yeah, all these examples pretty much reassure what I already thought. You couldn't be like "彼は～がしたい" because then you're speaking about someone else's feelings. Sorry if I was the cause of any confusion...

- せてほしい - arch9443 - 2011-06-23

Could たい be used in past tense when talking about someone else to try and say he wanted to do something?

So 彼はXがしたかった

Or is it still not appropriate?

- せてほしい - nest0r - 2011-06-23

@arch

See pp. 443-5 of Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar.

- せてほしい - erlog - 2011-06-23

This could all be wrong, but it's my general understanding based on my experience.

edit:
Turned out I was wrong!

- せてほしい - nest0r - 2011-06-23

@erlog

Copied this from p. 443 of DoBJG:

“... Vmasu tai with the third person subject is acceptable, however, in the following situations:

(1) In the past tense
和男はとても行きたかった。
(Kazuo wanted to go very badly.) ”

(It goes on.)

- せてほしい - erlog - 2011-06-23

Cool.

- せてほしい - Tzadeck - 2011-06-23

wccrawford Wrote:Or "You want me to listen." Or "He wants me to listen." Or...

Really, without context, it can mean anything.
Could you delete/edit this post? It's not correct.

- せてほしい - nest0r - 2011-06-24

yudantaiteki Wrote:Probably not. 聴く vs. 聞く is one of those things that isn't well-defined; while the use of 聴く may indicate some attempt at differentiating meaning, the use of 聞く can just mean that someone uses that one all the time.
You wouldn't be tempted to read it as ‘ask’ if it were 聞かせて rather than 聴かせて?

I can't put my finger on why, but it seems unlikely to use ‘ask’ with てほしい.

So I guess I'm trying to disentangle/connect the idea of the semantic/morphemic usage differences of the characters and this construction.

- せてほしい - yudantaiteki - 2011-06-24

I don't think so. 聞く means both ask and listen, 聴く (supposedly) refers to only a specific kind of listening. For instance, Daijirin's first 3 definitions of きく:
１ 音・声を耳に受ける。耳に感じ取る。「物音を―・く」「見るもの―・くものすべてが珍しい」「鳥の声も―・かれない」
２ （聴く）注意して耳にとめる。耳を傾ける。「名曲を―・く」「有権者の声を―・く」
３ 話を情報として受け入れる。「―・くところによると」「君の評判をあちこちで―・いた」

Their definition 5 is the "ask" one:
５ （「訊く」とも書く）尋ねる。問う。「道を―・く」「自分の胸に―・け」「彼の都合を―・いてみる」

Although 訊く is relatively rare, in my experience (partly because it's not Jouyou, I assume...)

EDIT: I think with the right context you could say something like 質問を聞かせてほしい to mean "I want you to let me ask questions".