Hi everyone!
Lately I've tried my very best to understand the different verb conjugations. Not just the example sentences from *insert grammar guide*, but I mean - really understanding them.
I've read through "A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar", Tae Kim's guide and several other books.
My main problem right now is understanding the difference between the causative, passive and potential forms. I understand them when I read about them, but I don't think I truly understand the difference between them. Especially when it comes to native material.
Some examples:

From Tokyo Dogs (A is the boss, telling B to work with a partner that B hates)
A:まあ　そう言うなマルオ。 仲良くやってアメリカ流の捜査学んでくれよ。
B:何を学ぶんすか！？作戦ミスって本隊外されて日本に飛ばされてるんすよ！
Ok, 外されて and 飛ばされて can technically be both causative and passive, right?
When I find sentences like this, I find it hard to distinguish the differences clearly. Do you guys have any tips / mini-rules / questions you can ask yourself to tell which is which?

Some examples on the Passive or Potential problem: (two unrelated sentences)
Ex. 1 友達が殴られてるのにうっとりしてる場合か (つくし from 花より男子 complaining about the girls being fascinated by F4/the bullies)

Ex. 2 彼女の記憶が回復すれば必ず有力な手掛かりが得られるはず。

殴られて from example 1 and 得られる from example 2 could be both potential and passive, right?

I know that these problems might seem stupid to some of you, but this is really holding me back at the moment, and I'd love some insight from you people.
If you have some good guides to refer to, then by all means do so. Everything is appreciated - as long as it leads me on the way to understand these verb conjugations! =) Especially the passive thing is still hard to really get a hold on - maybe it's because I've never studied grammar in either English nor Norwegian, or maybe I'm just dumb, but that won't stop me, hehe! I just need some help, that's all!
Like I said, everything is appreciated. I remember back in the days, when I was forced to study German, I had some mini-rules and questions I asked myself when I wrote and read sentences, like: "who's doing this?" and "what's the function of that thing?" etc, that made me understand the sentences, and made me able to write the right way. Do you guys know of a similar crutch to use in Japanese, in the beginning when these things aren't internalized?

Thank you so much for your time and patience!
Zorlee..

A) Causative is 外させる. Passive is 外される.

Consonant + あ せ る is causative.


B) Context. I think I asked the same question, and this was the answer I was given.

No, they can't be both passive and causative.
Passive: 外される　飛ばされる
Causative: 外させる　飛ばさせる
Causative-passive: 外させられる　飛ばさせられる

EDIT: I messed up. You can't use the short form of causative-passive with す verbs. So yeah, those two examples can only be passive.

And as for passive/potential, you have to rely on context. It's usually extremely clear which is implied though, and when it isn't clear, it's usually irrelevant.

Here are some simple to understand sentences:

Passive
-[なんで日本語を勉強していますか?]とよく聞かれます
-結婚してから娘は夫に殴られた
Aに殴られた got hit by A
Aが殴られた A got hit by ...(here the person who hit A is not specified)



Causative
2. -何ども言わせるな!
-質問があったら聞かせてください
-これ以上悪化させないように...
-きみにはもう厳しい思いはさせない

3. Potential
Pretty easy

-------------------
彼女の記憶が回復すれば必ず有力な手掛かりが得られるはず。
If her memory recovers, (we/I/you..) will definitely be able to gain some useful clues.

Thank you guys very much for your help!
At least I found out that the causative / passive thing won't be a problem, it was just me relying too much on Rikaichan =)

I'm still trying to fully grasp the passive thing though.
The main concept is that the verb happens to / effects the subject of the sentence (whether mentioned or not), right?

Zorlee Wrote:I'm still trying to fully grasp the passive thing though.
The main concept is that the verb happens to / effects the subject of the sentence (whether mentioned or not), right?

Pretty much. Jay Rubin gives these three examples in his book:

1)かばんを盗んだ。
2)かばんが盗まれた。
3)かばんを盗まれた。

The first one, not passive, means "X stole the suitcase." So, could be "He stole the suitcase," "They stole the suitcase." People often translate this sort of sentence in their head as "The suitcase was stolen," forgetting that the suitcase is NOT the subject of this sentence, and that this sentence is talking about someone doing it.

The second, rather, is "The suitcase was stolen." This form is used considerably less than it is in English (but has become more common since English has become so widespread in Japan).

The third is the suffering passive, what you are talking about above. The translation is literally "X suffered the Y-stole-the-suitcase." Rubin argues that nothing passive happened to the suitcase (hence why it's marked by を, like in the first example which is not passive). Rather, as the first part of the verb is talking about what Y did to the suitcase, the passive part of the verb is talking about the subject X. So, if the suitcase stolen was yours, and an unnamed group of people stole it, a good way to look at it might be "DAMN! They stole my suitcase!" The power of this translation keeps in mind what is happening is not what is happening in number 2, in that the suitcase is not the subject. It also keeps in mind that both the person who's suitcase was stolen and the people who stole the suitcase can be playing a part in the sentence, but both are often omitted in true Japanese fashion. And, it conveys the fact that someone is being hurt by the fact that they stole the suitcase.

I meant to explain it clearly, but maybe I failed.

Oh, the second line in the irc log should read "...sounds like you (are/get) caught (in) a shower." The passive form in the example implies that the person who got rained on doesn't think it's a good thing. Sorry for my sloppy grammar.

Tzadeck Wrote:I meant to explain it clearly, but maybe I failed.

Good enough for me.

No idea if the following conversation I made up was completely correct or natural. I just woke up, but assuming it makes sense, it demonstrates the passive tense.

A: ねぇ、聞いた?あの花屋さんが首になったらしいよ。 (Hey, did you hear? It seems that florist got fired.)
B:　なっ、何言ったの? (Wh-what did you say?)
A: 大丈夫?顔が蒼くなったし、 (Are you okay? Your face got pale and stuff)
B:　首になられたって本当? ( Is it true I got fired on (he got fired on me)? [passive])
A:　ん?花屋さんのこと気にしすぎるんじゃない? (Hm? Aren't you worrying too much about the florist?)
B:　いえ、父さんのことよ。　(No, it's my dad.)

A says 首になった which is just kind of neutral and matter of fact. B says the passive 首になられた because it affects them　(this conversation implies that the florist is her dad or that the florist is related to her dad and therefore related to them).

Something something. I really should not be doing this right now.

Thank you guys so much!! =)
I love your little "formula", IceCream! And thank you for the irc-chat-write-up, Magamo is the sh*t! =)
But since we're on the topic of passive forms (and since we're all geeks here!), I've heard talk about two forms of the passive, the direct and indirect passive.
I read up on the passive forms (again) in a Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and it said that the indirect passive usually includes animate agents and volitional actions. The direct is more, well direct, f.ex.: 山田さんはビルにぶたれた。

BUT - do I need to focus on this? I mean, do I need to focus on understanding the differences within the passive forms, or will I understand sentences anyway, if I just focus on nailing the passive form in general?

I want to know enough grammar to understand what I'm reading well, but I don't want to spend too much time worrying about it! =)

I don't see how it can be hard to keep intransitive and passive separate.

intransitive: Something does something by itself.
passive: Something was done something by someone else.

kuruma ga tomatte iru <- The car is standing still
kuruma ga tomerarete iru <- The car is being stopped (by someone or something)

Well, I'm a bit confused about the Dictionary of Basic Japanese grammar:

This is an example sentence from the "Indirect passive form":
太郎は晴子にタバコをすわれた。

This is an ecample sentence from the "Direct passive form":
山田さんはビルにぶたれた。

I really don't see the difference. At all.
I don't think the author talks about intransitive vs. passive, since 吸う is transitive (at least according to EDICT) and passive in the above sentence.

Try to imagine the (lacking) context for the sentences.

なにが吸われた？
誰が吸った？

誰がぶたれた？
誰がぶった？

If you can ask yourself these questions your understanding is more then enough. If not, have patience. It takes time.

I would guess that the difference between indirect and direct is that indirect needs the を... or rather that direct can't take を. But I'm guessing here, I really haven't seen a distinction being made before.

Ah, just found this nice link:
http://parrotsupport1.seesaa.net/archives/200904-1.html

Zorlee Wrote:This is an example sentence from the "Indirect passive form":
太郎は晴子にタバコをすわれた。

This is an example sentence from the "Direct passive form":
山田さんはビルにぶたれた。

I really don't see the difference. At all.

Think about the non-passive "equivalent" sentence. For the 'direct' passive example this is ビルは山田さんをぶった -- the subject in the passive comes from the (を-marked) direct object in the non-passive.

For the 'indirect passive' the non-passive sentence is 晴子はタバコをすった -- and 太郎 isn't present in this sentence at all.

So in a 'direct passive' sentence the subject is having the action directly done to them. In an 'indirect passive' the action is being done to something else (in this case the タバコ) and the subject of the sentence is indirectly affected by it.

As mentat_kgs says, the most important thing here is that it's clear to you who is doing the action to what.

mentat - thank you! I think I got it, after some thinking! =) On the other hand, I understand the sentences without the "is this direct or indirect" thinking, so I'll let it slide, at least for now.

IceCream: Haha, about English grammar terms - I've been talking about the volitional tense on these boards, and even taught a friend of mine the concept behind it. BUT I just learned today what "volitional" actually means. So yeah... Fail. =)

EDIT: pm - thank you for the additional info! Made things even clearer! =)

IceCream Wrote:Sorry if i confused you with the intransitive vs. passive thing, it's probably obvious to everyone else. It just confused me because the passive tense in english and the passive tense in japanese aren't the same thing, and some of the concept of intransitive is mixed up with it.

You seem to get the hang of things without any framework, but I thought I'd offer a bit of an outline for you to hang your ideas on. I think it's just a naming issue. What you're calling intransitives are actually indirect passives (b/c intransitive verbs can only become indirect passives). But it's worth noting that indirect passives can be use transitive verbs too.

IceCream's Outline: 3 types/uses of ～られる discussed here:

(1) Direct Passive (directly affected by action, aka "simple")

-grammatically equivalent to English passive
-transitive verbs only
-active sentence object becomes passive sentence subject: を→が [undergoer]
-active sentence subject becomes　passive sentence dative: が→に [agent]
[-animate subject: usually an affectee (may be from meaning of verb)
-inanimate subject: neutral, written, (some other situations), aka "二よって passive"]

(2) Indirect Passive (only indirectly affected, aka "affective", "adversive", "suffering")

- doesn't exist in English [some are like English pseudo passive]
- more common in Japanese than simple passives
- transitive or intransitive
- agent に, object を　(if a transitive verb)
- subject usually animate, often the speaker (some poetic/metaphoric inanimate)
- animate subject indirectly "emotionally" affected by the action
- affected favorably or unfavorably

(3) Polite - just know it to recognize it and not confuse it with passive.
-it doesn't mean passive or "emotionally affected"
-it means the person is higher status/position

* * * * *
Bonus: Indirect passive examples:
Intransitive:
active: 父が死んだ　 Father died.
indirect passive: 私は父に死なれた　 Father died (and I was affected)
lit. I was died on by my father.
Transitive: (direct & indirect objects)
active: 彼に賞品を渡した。 (They) handed a prize to him.
indirect passive1: 彼は賞品を渡された。 He got a prize handed to him (and he was happy)
indirect passive2: (私は)賞品を彼に渡された。
(They) handed a prize to him (and I was happy/troubled.)

[simple passive: 賞品が彼に渡された。The prize was handed to him.]

Note: Here 彼に　is an indirect object - "to him" b/c 渡す　has both direct and indirect objects. (This is not the same as the に　meaning "by" someone in the earlier example.)

Also, indirect passive 2 is ambiguous. It could also mean "I was affected by him handing me a prize" (ie 彼に＝by him.)

Edit: fixed 商品ー賞品
Edit2 in [ ]: added clarifications for any future readers

IceCream Wrote:Actually, i think what you call the "active intransitive" are, in my english head, the missing direct intransitive passives, even though they look like a normal verb and aren't formed like the direct transitive passive, but they seem to work in the same way.

The active sentence is just the regular sentence. Active (someone acts on something) is contrasted with passive (something gets acted on by someone). I included the active sentence there only to show what the equivalent active sentence would be (as pm215 was doing.) It often helps to figure out what the active sentence would be to know who's doing what.

Intransitives cannot become direct passives. This makes sense - there's no direct object to become the subject of the passive sentence.
Transitive: You eat an apple -> The apple is eaten by you.
Intransitive: Your father dies. -> ?

So the indirect passive has nothing to do with what we think of as regular passive in English. English passive are almost all transitive (some exceptions). Indirect passive is a unique thing in Japanese to express that some action has an indirect emotional effect on the subject/affectee). I think the terms Direct (for simple passive) vs Indirect (for affective passive) are unfortunate b/c they can get confused with with Active vs Passive.

Quote:But, if the afective intransitive passive is only used indirectly, and the intransitive (direct passive) is used only directly, that makes total sense!!!

but - there is no intransitive direct passive.

Quote:1. is the intransitive affective passive used for someone being happy too? Or just the transitive? and, 2. magamo said the passive is generally used when it affects someone badly. So, are there certain specifiable situations in which it will be used for good things too?

Both types can be used for positively or negatively affected. I think being negatively affected is more common, but positive effect is possible. Depends on context and verb.

Quote:2. How do you distinguish between 賞品が彼に渡された。"The prize was handed to him", and "the prize was handed by him?" What does this do to the passive? Is this because it's が instead of を? Why does が do that to it?

It can be ambiguous without context with certain verbs that have indirect objects (eg pass/tell/teach to someone) b/c there are 2 possible に phrases. [Edit: I should have used an example without an indirect object to avoid unnecessary complication.]

[Correction: When the object becomes the passive subject (theme) and there's potentially an indirect object and an agent, a single に　phrase is interpreted as the indirect object. If the agent is also included, it's marked with によって.
o 賞品が 彼に 渡された (to him)
x 賞品が 彼に 渡された (by him)
o 賞品が 彼に 彼女によって　渡された (to him, by her)
x 賞品が 彼に 彼女に 渡された]

As for が　and を, think about what the subject of the sentence is. In the direct passive, the object becomes the subject (so objectを　becomes subjectが.) In the indirect passive, the person getting affected is the subject (so objectを doesn't change). 　

In the earlier indirect passive example, 太郎は晴子にタバコをすわれた, the affectee is 太郎は, the agent is 晴子に, the object is タバコを. 太郎 is bothered by 晴子 having smoked. The verb smoke doesn't have an indirect object.

*Later edits and corrections in [ ] to hopefully avoid confusing any future readers.

Great posts, guys! I'm learning a whole lot here! =)
Just a question from my side:

有名な建築家がこの劇場を設計した。ギリシャの建築様式を採り入れている。

This is a sentence from my KO2001 deck. Now, I've always looked at 採り入れる as a word, without anything fancy. But - should I look at it as a passive verb here? As in "The greek architectural style is adopted (at this theater, by the the agent?)"
Or am I making things harder for myself?

There's a lot of words, say for example 壊れる, that ends in the typical れる passive/potential ending. How do I know if its passive or just a word in itself?

You know that by knowing words, which is why you use Anki to boost your vocabulary

You can't expect to know if a word is just a word or passive or any other form by looking at the endings. You can only analyse a word you already know.

Zorlee Wrote:There's a lot of words, say for example 壊れる, that ends in the typical れる passive/potential ending. How do I know if its passive or just a word in itself?

If it appears in the dictionary then it's the plain form of the verb :-)

Tobberoth Wrote:You can't expect to know if a word is just a word or passive or any other form by looking at the endings. You can only analyse a word you already know.

This is true, but it is possible to say that something is definitely *not* a passive/potential/whatever and thus narrow down the possibilities. In particular, it's a useful skill to be able to find a verb in a dictionary starting from whatever inflected form you've encountered. You might have to have a couple of guesses, of course. For instance, 採り入れている cannot be a passive form of anything, because passives end -areru, and there's no 'a' here. (It could in theory be the potential form of a hypothetical *採り入る.) For 壊れる you can make use of the usual convention that verb inflections happen only in the okurigana, so even though it ends wareru it's not passive.

Zorlee Wrote:should I look at it as a passive verb here? As in "The greek architectural style is adopted (at this theater, by the the agent?)"

This is semantically wrong as well as "not a passive because of the form of the verb". If it were passive then you could put in a だれかに clause to indicate the agent. But in fact 採り入れる doesn't let you do that. So not only does it not look like a duck, it doesn't quack like a duck either :-)

Ah! Of course! =)
Thinking Japanese grammar after playing a concert is obviously not the best combo!

Will be back in the morning for more (passive) fun! =)

EDIT: Haha, pm, thank you! And also thank you for your patience - I'm clinging to the "there's no stupid questions"-theory, so bear with me, hehe!

Chill out, and absorb patterns. I feel you're over-thinking this. The passives would be 壊される or 壊れられる、which are different from 壊す and 壊れる--hence no problem. Read, read, and all becomes clear.

Now, it's time for a stupidly-crazy theory:

Indirect and direct passives are exactly the same thing. Look at these two sentences:

「ケーキが食べました。」
「ケーキを食べました。」

What's the difference? The verb? Is one of those active verbs suffering? (Dunno about suffering, but I'd be worried if there were a well-fed cake on the loose.) No, the difference is the noun function.

「ケーキが食べられました。」
「ケーキを食べられました。」

Once again, the noun function. The trick here is that Japanese passive transitive verbs have two functions:
が：recipient of action
を：patient/theme of underlying transitive verb

Now, what's unusual about this (from the standpoint of English) is that if you start with a transitive verb with one patient and inflect it into the passive mood, you get a verb with two patients: one receives the literal action, one the figurative action. Typically, one of these is the topic, so you don't see both at once, but with my magical Contrived Example Machine:

「間違いない、ボーブは悪魔だよ!ジムがケーキを食べられたから。」
Make no mistake: Bob's a devil! 'Cuz Jim got his cake eaten (by him).

A more reasonable example would be something like:
ー　ジムは何であそこに座って泣いている？
Why is Jim sitting over there crying?
ー　ケーキを食べられた。
Got his cake eaten.

And now, the really wild one: a suffering passive without the を:

ー　俺のケー～～～キ！
My ca~~~ke!
ー　またか？オイ、皆、ジムが食べられそうだ。今度は誰が悪いか？
Again? Hey, everybody, looks like Jim got (it) eaten. Whose fault is it this time?

Yes? No? Should I just shut up?

IceCream Wrote:The grammar structure for transitive simple passives and intransitives is the same, suggesting they fall into the same grammatical category.

I think this only looks this way because of the verb you've picked, which allows an 'animate' target marked by に (compare the 渡す example somebody else gave earlier). This leaves you with confusion in your "transitive simple passive" category because in XがYに落とされた Y could be either the agent doing the dropping or the target of the thing being dropped. Try again with another verb pair which doesn't take に like this (止る 止める maybe?) and I think you might find it simpler. (All these constructed examples leave me distrusting my intuitions, but I think your 't.s.p' example is wrong.)

(Transitive simple passives are a kind of subset of intransitives in the sense of "they don't take an を-marked direct object". But you can always indicate the agent in a t.s.p. with に, which is not true in a 'plain' intransitive; に there is usually doing some other job.)