Is it just me, or is the conjugation of -ru verbs into the passive and potential forms exactly the same? I haven't encountered passive verbs very often before, so I only have Tae Kim's website to go on right now, but it seems to me that this would be very confusing. Is this another one of those "it becomes clear in context" issues?

For example, ポリッジが誰かに食べられた！ (example from http://www.guidetojapanese.org/causepass.html)

This seems to me like it can be read as either, "The porridge was eaten by someone" (this is the translation given) or "The porridge was able to be eaten by someone", i.e. the porridge was out and available to be eaten by someone.

"it becomes clear in the context"

shaydwyrm Wrote:This seems to me like it can be read as either, "The porridge was eaten by someone" (this is the translation given) or "The porridge was able to be eaten by someone", i.e. the porridge was out and available to be eaten by someone.

I think that if you look at your English more carefully then it might be clearer. If you think about what you've done with your second translation, you've used both a passive and potential construction in English. It doesn't make much sense, which is why you had to clarify it by re-writing it. You can't really say 'able to be ...en' in English. If you say 'I am able to be eaten', you're trying to say 'I am edible', which turns the verb into an adjective.

In Japanese, you have to choose either the potential form translation or the passive form translation. You can't cobble them together. You're right that they sometimes share the same form so there may be situations where you have to make a judgement (can anyone think of examples?). Generally, it all comes down to the proper use of particles. With the passive form, に is used to label the person that the action is done 'by'. This particle won't be used in this way with any active construction.

The thing that I have a problem with is the way that が and を sometimes seem to be interchangeable in passive constructions. As you'd expect, the object in the active sentence turns into the subject in the corresponding passive sentence but sometimes the が and を don't swap round to reflect this. I haven't studied this in ages so there might be a very sensible explanation, or I might be wrong but I think that something like this is acceptable:

ポリッジを食べたかったのに、兄ちゃんにポリッジを食べられちゃった。
I was looking forward to my porridge but my big brother ate it.

You'd expect it to be ポリッジが食べられちゃった but I think the above is valid. This failure to interchange the particles seems to happen more often when the passive sentence carries the sense of victimisation, which is extremely common.

Thanks for the detailed response!

wrightak Wrote:I think that if you look at your English more carefully then it might be clearer. If you think about what you've done with your second translation, you've used both a passive and potential construction in English. It doesn't make much sense, which is why you had to clarify it by re-writing it. You can't really say 'able to be ...en' in English. If you say 'I am able to be eaten', you're trying to say 'I am edible', which turns the verb into an adjective.

In Japanese, you have to choose either the potential form translation or the passive form translation. You can't cobble them together. You're right that they sometimes share the same form so there may be situations where you have to make a judgement (can anyone think of examples?). Generally, it all comes down to the proper use of particles. With the passive form, に is used to label the person that the action is done 'by'. This particle won't be used in this way with any active construction.

I think I get what you're saying here. I guess I was essentially reading "ポリッジジが食べられた" as "the porridge was able to be eaten", rather than "(someone) was able to eat the porridge." I was confusing the omission of the subject with a passive construction. Nonetheless, I think this simplified example is an example of a situation in which you might have to make a judgement call:

"ポリッジジを食べられた"

This could mean either "(someone) was able to eat the porridge" or "the porridge was eaten (by someone)." When written that way the difference seems trivial, but imagine if I walk into the room and say that - one could mean that I was able to eat the porridge, while the other would mean that someone else ate the porridge (and I was negatively affected).

wrightak Wrote:The thing that I have a problem with is the way that が and を sometimes seem to be interchangeable in passive constructions. As you'd expect, the object in the active sentence turns into the subject in the corresponding passive sentence but sometimes the が and を don't swap round to reflect this. I haven't studied this in ages so there might be a very sensible explanation, or I might be wrong but I think that something like this is acceptable:

ポリッジを食べたかったのに、兄ちゃんにポリッジを食べられちゃった。
I was looking forward to my porridge but my big brother ate it.

You'd expect it to be ポリッジが食べられちゃった but I think the above is valid. This failure to interchange the particles seems to happen more often when the passive sentence carries the sense of victimisation, which is extremely common.

Wow, I can see how that would be confusing sometimes. However, a passive construction can never have both を　and が, right? So the problem is just getting used to the two particles meaning the same thing in that situation?