is the なくて conjugation used in a you didn't need to / shouldn't have done way a lot of the time?

for verbs, i guess this is transitive vs intransitive, not actually sure which way round is which, but: Is ある　ending is something done to something, or makes it passive? Can you still turn this into a られる? And, why would you do that if the ある type is already passive?
e.g. 決まる

is える　endings the doing one, e.g. 決める.

and words with an い ending instead of the る verb makes the word into an object or thing?

Then, what does the あす endings do, or is that another type of verb doing one of the things above?　e.g. 聞かす

sorry about my lack of grammar technical terms!! hope you can understand what im getting at...

As for なくて, it can be used for both "you don't have to do ___" and "you have to do _____", depending on what comes after なくて。

If it's "________しなくていいんだ” it's "You don't have to do ______". If you're saying "___________しなくてはならない” or "しなくてはいけない” it's "You/he/she/I have to do ______".

edit: if the は is taken out after the なくて that's ok too. That's what I hear more often. When the は is included, it always seems to be an older person or a more "proper" person talking. This is just something I've noticed though so if anyone wants to correct me on it, go ahead.

IceCream Wrote:for verbs, i guess this is transitive vs intransitive, not actually sure which way round is which, but: Is ある（まる）　ending is something done to something, or makes it passive? Can you still turn this into a られる? And, why would you do that if the える type is already passive?
e.g.

is える　endings the doing one, e.g. 決める.

(1) "which way round" -- transitive takes an object with を , intransitive doesn't. The terminology doesn't matter, you can think of them as "takes を" and "does not" if you like. The usual Japanese terms are 他動詞 (takes an object) and 自動詞 (does not) -- which is which is at least easier to remember from the kanji :-) NB that this is purely a matter of syntax and not anything to do with meaning (ie "doing verbs"), although in practice the two ideas agree often enough that people get confused. (eg Language Log has an occasional rant about people who think 'passive' means something like "vague and woolly".)

(2) Transitive vs intransitive is a fixed "you just have to learn these pairs" kind of thing. (In contrast, the ~られる passive ending is 'productive' -- you can apply it to just about any verb. This is why it's grammar rather than vocab.) There are some 'good guesses' you can make about transitive-intransitive pairs, so as you note the -eru = transitive, -aru=intransitive pair is pretty common, but it's not the only one. See
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ti_list.html but really at some point it's just a matter of (a) paying attention when you read and (b) learning/memorising/absorbing the distinctions.

So you shouldn't think of transitive and intransitive as forms of a single underlying verb. They are two different verbs, just with related meanings.

(3) distinction between "passive" , ie ~られる, and transitive/intransitive. In English:
(a) I opened the door [active, transitive]
(b) The door opened [active, intransitive]
© The door was opened (by somebody) [passive]
In Japanese:
ドアを開けた
ドアが開いた
ドアが (だれかに) 開けられた
Bonus extra not-possible-in-English example:
(私が) (だれかに) ドアを開けられた
roughly "I had the door opened on me (by somebody)".

You can have passive+intransitive, as in the famous 母に死なれた.

pm215 Wrote:ドアが (だれかに) 開けられた

Note that using passives with inanimate objects is usually restricted to formal writing (unless it's the "adversative" passive, as the other example). (And passives in general are used much less frequently than in English because many of the ways we use the passive in English are expressed in other ways in Japanese.)

Usually "The door was opened [by somebody]" would be expressed in Japanese as ドアが開けてある。

Also Re: something in the original post, なくて by itself is just the -te form of ない. It can be used in many contexts (i.e. あの人は先生じゃなくて、学生です).

First, I just don't do prescriptive grammar. (Kids, just say no to telling people how to speak.) Here's what I know from a descriptive standpoint:

1) なくて has essentially the same meaning as the more recent and more colloquial ないで: the negative counterpart of the て-form, which is used in all kinds of constructions: ても、ていい、て imperative, etc, etc.

2) English often uses the same verb for transitive and intransitive constructions:

The door, I closed myself. ドアは僕が閉めた。(transitive)
The door closes. ドアは閉まる。(intransitive)

Japanese usually doesn't. There are some rules here, but they're not very consistent. Besides, they're too confusing, and by the time you puzzle things out the conversation has probably moved on. Really, the only thing you can do is learn to intuit it, which means input and SRS review.

For 決まる vs 決める specifically, Core 2000 has these examples

帰国することに決めました。(Transitive. I've made a resolution to return home.)
旅行の日程が決まりました。(Intransitive. (Travel plans) have come to resolution.)

IceCream Wrote:but, i don't think i'm quite clear on the use conditions for ない and なく　entirely either. Somehow they seem to have a different feel, like ない is more straightforward negation, and なく　sort of "without", or, with a slightly negative connotation, or am i missing something entirely obvious?

This has nothing to do with meaning, it's purely grammar. なくて (or なく in written style) is the continuative (-te form) of ない. It has no special implications; it's just used when you need to link ない to another predicate.

As for the passive and transitive/intransitive, you may want to read more detailed explanations of that in DBJ or something like that.

Quote:Also, if they are 2 different verbs, for transitive and intransitive, well, i'm confused, isn't 死ぬ just the normal one? so making it into a passive is ok. But, like 開けられた would be the passive of 開けた. What would the passive of 開いた be if that's possible?

The passive of 開く is 開かれる, but it would not be used very often -- as I said, using passives with inanimate objects in Japanese is rarely done outside of formal writing.

The Japanese passive is one of those things that it's hard to understand with relation to English because the Japanese passive is used in very different ways from English. Most of the time, a passive sentence in English is not going to be expressed in Japanese with the grammatical passive.

For instance, Tae Kim has this sentence:
（４）　この教科書は多くの人に読まれている。
- This textbook is being read by a large number of people.

However, I do not agree with this Japanese (outside of formal writing). The purpose of the passive in the English sentence is to put "textbook" at the front and emphasize it as the focus of the sentence. However, this is already done in the Japanese sentence by この教科書は, so there's no reason to say 多くの人に読まれている -- you can just say 多くの人が読んでいる. (I wonder what a native speaker would think though...)

IceCream Wrote:ok, so, passive in english... i had the idea it was "to be x / to be x'ed". thats wrong then? it has to be "to be x'ed by y"?

No, "to be x'd" is about right. There will be a 'y' but usually the reason for using the passive in English is because the 'y' just isn't that interesting, so actually putting it into the sentence isn't required. That's why I put the 'by somebody' bits in brackets -- they're optional.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Note that using passives with inanimate objects is usually restricted to formal writing

yudantaiteki Wrote:using passives with inanimate objects in Japanese is rarely done in formal writing

Which? :-)

Oops. I meant "outside of formal writing" for the second one.

I can't say I'd consciously noticed that; I'll have to pay more attention :-)

Are you excluding passives used in relative clauses, eg 最も読まれたスポーツ漫画 ?

pm215 Wrote:I can't say I'd consciously noticed that; I'll have to pay more attention :-)

I've read that from several sources, and after I read it I started paying attention and I think it's pretty accurate. As I said above, Japanese doesn't need to use passive as often because a subject isn't required, you can use は to focus, and there are structures like てある that express the same idea as the passive in English.

Quote:Are you excluding passives used in relative clauses, eg 最も読まれたスポーツ漫画 ?

Yeah, I guess so -- when there's no other way to phrase it, like in that case. There might also be some common phrases that use it, when I searched 読まれた漫画 on google a lot of the hits were for もっとも読まれた漫画.

I should perhaps just say that it's less common in speech than in writing.

IceCream Wrote:hmm. ok, i didn't know it was normal て form, thanks. but, these are from speech... aren't these more without than ない？ is it different?
性懲りもなく夢を追っている人間を見ると無性にムカつくんだ。
恥も外聞もなく 俺に 金 貸してくれって頭下げた。あの必死さ 忘れんな。

There is no difference; both of these examples are just the continuative form, in order to connect the two clauses together. I'm not sure why you think it's stronger than just ない.

(I don't think these are from real speech, they look like they're from dialogue in fictional works -- that doesn't always mimic real life speech exactly.)

Quote:家賃なら ちゃんと払いますから ご心配なく。

This use of なく (the -ku form) is idiomatic; it's used to make a kind of request or wish but can only be done with a very small number of fixed phrases (other examples are ご遠慮なく and はやく).

IceCream Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:I'm not sure why you think it's stronger than just ない.

i guess it's what happens sometimes when you don't bother studying grammar

I think that's the danger in the "don't study grammar, just see it a bunch of times" approach -- it can lead to drawing incorrect conclusions. What you're doing is good; see a lot of examples but then also get explanations so that you can help make sense of the examples.

Hmm. I think there are two things you need with the passive:
(1) understanding of the form:
* recognising something as being the passive form of verb X
* knowing who is doing what to who
* distinguishing plain passive / 'adversative' passive / use of the passive form in keigo / potential form of ichidan verbs (which happen to be the same ~られる ending)

(2) getting a feel for when it is or isn't used

I'm not completely convinced about your 'reversifier of the direction of action' but it's not so obviously wrong that I'd tell you not to think that way :-)

Missed this bit in your earlier message:

Quote:But, pm215, don't you think that intransitives often translate to "to be x'ed"? I mean, even if it doesn't exist in english, you can kind of make them up in your head and it makes sense. So i'm still a little confused by what passivity really is distinguished from that.

Sometimes we don't really have an equivalent intransitive in English and the English passive is the most natural way of phrasing it; similarly ~てある . Don't let this fool you into thinking that the two things in Japanese are the same...

With an intransitive verb the subject of the sentence is actively doing something:
* the ship moved away from the dock
With a passive the subject of the sentence is having something done to them:
* the ship was moved away from the dock [by somebody]
Passives always imply this other person doing the action (even if sometimes they're a shadowy offstage figure rather than really being in the sentence).

I don't know how we've made it this far into the discussion without somebody recommending Jay Rubin's _Making Sense of Japanese_, incidentally. (you can get the section on passives in the google books preview...)

In general I think it's a big mistake to respond to grammatical explanations you don't understand by making up your own explanations. I think that in most cases your own made-up explanation will turn out to be wrong (or at best incomplete).

IceCream Wrote:yudantaiteki, i have to respectfully disagree. grammar rules are descriptive, not prescriptive. By nature, they are incomplete.

Any grammar discussion is used to try to identify patterns and help with understanding a language.

Yes, I agree. There's something in language pedagogy known as the "80% rule", which means that if a grammatical rule describes 80% of the usage of native speakers then it's good enough.

However, there's a big difference between a grammatical explanation being incomplete because the person doesn't understand the grammar pattern entirely, and an explanation being incomplete because it would be too lengthy and tedious to fully explain the whole thing.

What I meant specifically by "incomplete" is that sometimes learners formulate their own grammar rules based on a rather small amount of data, and they're not getting anywhere near 80%.

The rules made by someone other than me will generally be more complete than an explanation i could give, but at the same time, if it's not helping to understand and get to grips with a language because the concept doesn't work the right way in my mind, its not useful.

Quote:Which am i more likely to recognise, a hole in someone elses rule that i don't properly grasp, or exceptions to a rule i've just made up? By making your own rules, you make the language your own more.

If you're able to correctly recognize exceptions to your rule and use that to fine-tune your rule, I suppose that's OK, but not everyone can do that. There have been a number of psychological studies that show people tend to conform their understanding of the data to their own pre-formed erroneous conceptions rather than the other way around.