tokyostyle Wrote:

yudantaiteki Wrote:りんごは食べている can mean either "I am eating an apple" or "I have eaten the apple", as I said in the post 2 years ago above this. The second meaning is less common without the もう to make it explicit, but the もう is not absolutely required.

Unfortunately someone has suggested that you have some special degree or other clearly non-native knowledge that we should respect. However, I must point out that your supporters are massively misguided if they believe the answer you have given is correct. A very trivial Google search on this phrase in particular proves these translations to be misguided at best.

I do not in fact have a PhD in Japanese linguistics so I'm not going to claim special expertise for myself, but XはVerbいる can always refer to a resultant state or a repeated action, and can sometimes refer to an action in progress depending on the verb. Whether these interpretations make any sense or not depends on the context.

I agree that リンゴは食べている is not the best sentence to use -- while it's grammatically possible for this to mean "I have eaten an apple", I am not surprised that you can't find any uses of that meaning. It would require a very specific context and even then I would be surprised to see it without もう. Other verbs occur more commonly with the completed action meaning; here's an example I found on google:
飽きるほどゾンビ映画は見ているけど、まだ見たいんだよね
This means the writer has seen so many zombie movies they're getting tired of them but they still want to see this one. (And it certainly does not imply that the movies are doing the watching.)

As I said in the two previous posts, I believe it is much less common to have the "resultant state" without もう, but it is certainly done.

Quote:りんごは食べている is never used in solitude, if the internet is to believed, and when one does find this sentence fragment it's used almost exclusively as a habitual action. (The most common case I found was one who eats apples daily.)

That doesn't surprise me at all. Maybe I should have been clearer about what I was saying, but I do think it's important to understand the range of meanings a phrase can theoretically have while at the same time knowing what the most likely one is.

Quote:I don't take offense with your analysis as much I detest the fact that Arupan's comments were completely dismissed even though he clearly shows a much higher level of understanding of modern Japanese than his attackers.

Arupan's Japanese may be good but he seems to be confused about the てある construction. He recommends that I get a book about particles, but I will recommend to him that he look up the てある construction in DBJG or some other work like that. It may be somewhat counter-intuitive to use が with the transitive verbs in the てある construction, but that's the way it works. Apparently を is used by some native speakers as well, which I was not aware of, but が is still not wrong.

I'm also not entirely sure what he's trying to say about the は -- I can't believe he's saying that any は phrase has to be understood as the doer of the action, maybe it's just with this specific example since it's so context-less and somewhat unnatural. Try searching for "野菜は食べている" and you'll see a lot of sentences that means someone is eating vegetables (as tokyostyle says, the usual meaning will be that someone is repeatedly eating vegetables). For instance, one from a health supplement site:
野菜は食べているつもりでも、意外と量が足りていないものです
"Even if you believe you're eating vegetables [i.e. eating enough vegetables], you will be surprised that you're not getting enough."

[ファブリス]

Admin: off topic

tokyostyle Wrote:The moderators of this forum and particularly ファブリス himself should be ashamed that they let the worst form of censorship and intellectual depravity rule this site.

I am well aware there are no black and white situations, as is our moderation team I'm sure. Put simply for moderation we have to draw a line somewhere. The line in this case is: no personal attacks.

You are free to criticize someone else's posts, but then you'll need to learn to do that without direct insults or attacks, as the latter never benefits any parties involved.

I fully support our no-nonsense moderation team.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I do not in fact have a PhD in Japanese linguistics so I'm not going to claim special expertise for myself

You will always be able to provide more insight on these topics than me, and everyone here is very grateful that you take the time to do so.

I read your reply, it was very well thought out as always, and have only one small quip.

yudantaiteki Wrote:He recommends that I get a book about particles, but I will recommend to him that he look up the てある construction in DBJG or some other work like that.

I would recommend neither of you use bilingual works for the level of discussion you were having!

Maybe this has already been said, but:

A Japanese speaker on Lang-8 said to me that with verbs that describe actions that happen in a moment and verbs that describes actions that take more time have two different meanings in the -ている form.

落ちる is something that happens in an instant. And 落ちている will therefore mean "has fell" or "is in a state where it has fell". And so goes for many or all verbs that are considered to be over in an instant, as far as I could understand.

Whereas verbs that extend over more time, like 歩く become "is walking": 歩いている
This was roughly what he said.

That's generally the way it's described. But it's kind of a circular argument because there's no clear reason why verbs like 落ちる and 行く have to be instantaneous and not extending over time, that's just the way Japanese works.

Re: iru/aru
I think all you need do is consider the subject (whether omitted or not) of the clause and then apply aru for inanimate, and iru for animate as usual.

So if you saying something like "I already read the book", you'd end in iru because you are the subject (animate performing active verb).

If you say something like "the cake is in the fridge" "the door is open" etc then grammatically the subject is an inanimate object acting passively hence you end in aru.


Re ha/ga
Can't really be bothered having this debate again but ha offers no indication of who does what. That's not its purpose. The example given お昼ご飯は頼んである would mean something like: regards the lunch, it's been ordered. (Don't know about breakfast, dinner etc other things we might be discussing).
With wo/ga it'd just mean lunch has been ordered.
お昼ご飯が頼んでいる would be wrong though unless you actually meant that the lunch ordered something. Because the iru implies animateness of the grammatical subject.

nadiatims Wrote:Re: iru/aru
I think all you need do is consider the subject (whether omitted or not) of the clause and then apply aru for inanimate, and iru for animate as usual.

So if you saying something like "I already read the book", you'd end in iru because you are the subject (animate performing active verb).

If you say something like "the cake is in the fridge" "the door is open" etc then grammatically the subject is an inanimate object acting passively hence you end in aru.

The door is open is ドアが開いている.

you are right.

I explained it badly. What I mean is that choosing iru/aru comes down to understanding that there isn't really a teiru/tearu form of verbs, there's just the te form (which is technically a particle correct me if i'm wrong) and the words iru and aru with their standard meanings. And which one you choose will depend on the subject of the verb. Inanimate verbs can of course sometimes take iru. Perhaps animate ones can sometimes take aru though no examples pop to mind.

Now in the example, ドアが開いている, 開く is an intransitive verb that directly describes the subject itself and not some object it is acting (like 食べる for instance). For something like a door "to be open" is a perfectly valid descriptor. Ie. Opening/closing is what doors do (even if they are inanimate).

If it were ドアが開いてある, it would be the transitive version of 開く. That is the subjects of the two verbs would be different (and one omitted). Subject of ある is the door. Subject of 開く is whoever opened it. Make sense?

yudantaiteki Wrote:

nadiatims Wrote:Re: iru/aru
I think all you need do is consider the subject (whether omitted or not) of the clause and then apply aru for inanimate, and iru for animate as usual.

The door is open is ドアが開いている.

According to 基礎日本語文法:

Quote:1. 「テ形＋アル」の形式は、動作の結果としての対象の状態を示す。(pg.112)
2. テイル形の基本的な用法は、動きの継続を示す用法と、動きの結果の状態を示す用法である。(pg.114)

It's not living vs dead, but the result of an action vs the result of a movement and maybe more importantly the whole 自動詞・他動詞 difference. Ergo:

1. ドラが開けてある。
2. ドラが開いている。

It also covers the usage of 書いてある vs 書いている as a difference between resultant state and continuing state. (As opposed to the subject being an inanimate topic vs an animate writer.)

(I looked this up for myself and just decided to share.)

Well, one thing to always remember is that the ある/いる distinction is something in modern Japanese (that isn't even 100%); in older Japanese ある was used for both animate and inanimate things, and ゐる（いる） meant "sit" or "stay in one place" and could be used with inanimate things as well. So it shouldn't be expected that all uses of いる and ある in the modern language will divide neatly along animate/inanimate lines.

I am more and more of the impression that grammatical correctness is mostly a matter of choosing the right words based on their individual meanings (ie. word choice). Some words change in context, but that's simply a matter of those being multiple words that just sound the same or being parts of phrases which can just be thought of as long words in and of themselves. When a sentence gives you that distinct feeling of being ungrammatical, you will usually realise that it just doesn't make sense due to word choice.

I don't know if thinking about things like resultant state, continuous actions, animateness and transitivity is really that helpful.

Different people relate to language learning in different ways; I don't think there's one correct answer in regards to how to think about the sentence structure as a learner.

nadiatims Wrote:I don't know if thinking about things like resultant state, continuous actions, animateness and transitivity is really that helpful.

I agree. We have gone off the deep end and started discussing things that natives don't generally know, but use correctly anyway. I actually ran into a similar question about iru vs aru on Yahoo! chiebukuro even.