merlin.codex Wrote:Except that I provided a source to prove my first argument, and you didn't. So, your post goes NULL.

Not solving a math problem and saying it's obvious would net you 0 points.

「～が」 is far from considered standard, my friend. 「～が理解出来る」 and 「～を理解出来る」, for example, are technically both grammatically correct, but the former is less used than the latter although 「出来る」 is supposed to go with 「～が」. It's just a never written rule. So before going and claiming things like "you are wrong", actually try to come up with an example that would prove my theory wrong.

ex1: 自分をやりたい "I want to do myself"
ex2: 自分がやりたい →　Can have the meaning same as above or "I want to do it" (I doubt someone would use the above one, right?)

See the difference?

Plus, 「～がしたい～」　can have 「こと」 afterwards or whatever noun you want while 「～をしたい～」 can't, therefore 「～がしたい～」 can modify the noun and 「～をしたい」 can't. So the whole 「したい」 thingy becomes a 「形容詞」 or i-adjective (call it whatever you want since many people here look very touchy on this topic) if preceded by 「～が」.

Oh and, I haven't heard of someone actually "correcting" use of 「～が」 instead of 「～を」 in an essay. Must be very harsh.

Ah, actually, my bad, I was wrong about the second one. You're basically right. I was actually thinking of the potential form at the time but for some reason didn't realize we were talking about something else, haha(in my defense, I got less than 4 hours of sleep last night and worked all day, so it's kind of all been a daze). I'll go back and edit my post so as not to confuse people.

As for the first one, I still think you're wrong, and I'm not sure how that source proves anything.

fakewookie Wrote:What's your source for those examples being grammatically incorrect?

merlin.codex, I asked this because what you were saying was interesting and I was curious if it was actually true because I have never heard before that the likes of ありまして and such are grammatically incorrect. But am I to take it that it's more your own opinion than anything else?

I've never seen any source that says ありまして is incorrect either. There's no reason why it should be -- ます is a verb, so it should have a -te form. Usage dictates that you only use those -te forms of masu verbs in certain constructions (i.e. you don't say 書きましてください), but there's no reason they should be *grammatically* incorrect.

The Koujien has a citation from a Kyogen play: この間ござったおしうの所へいて呼びまして来い; it seems fairly petty to complain about a commonly used construction that's hundreds of years old. です after ない and such is much more recent.

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gesserit Wrote:The informal version is simply くなかった　but this CANNOT be made polite with です　(i.e., you cannot say くなかったです)

I've not heard this.

Dictionary of Basic Jpn Grammar includes ～くないです　and ～くなかったです　 as alternatives for ～くありません　and ～くありませんでした. It notes that the former 2 convey a slightly stronger negative sense.

I checked a few of my old textbooks and they list both forms and describe the latter 2 as more formal. There are many example sentences using ～くなかったです.

Can I ask where you learned this?

zigmonty Wrote:This whole argument is like arguing that splitting infinitives is wrong in english. It's a BS prescriptive rule.

“When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.” - Raymond Chandler

Thora Wrote:

gesserit Wrote:The informal version is simply くなかった　but this CANNOT be made polite with です　(i.e., you cannot say くなかったです)

I've not heard this.

Agreed. To me, なかったです is just as standard as ないです or 高かったです.

merlin.codex Wrote:Plus, 「～がしたい～」　can have 「こと」 afterwards or whatever noun you want while 「～をしたい～」 can't, therefore 「～がしたい～」 can modify the noun and 「～をしたい」 can't. So the whole 「したい」 thingy becomes a 「形容詞」 or i-adjective (call it whatever you want since many people here look very touchy on this topic) if preceded by 「～が」.

This isn't true. What are you basing this on? You can put こと or a noun behind either of them. Examples:
おしっこをしたいことを「尿意」と言いますがおならをしたいことは「屁意」という...
自炊をしたい人は見ておけ！ヨダレが出てくる超簡単1人暮らしレシピ60選まとめ

したい doesn't change word type based on the particle in front of it.

This comes up all the time on this forum, but there aren't set particles that go with set verbs. That's just not how Japanese works. The particles attach to the words in front of them. They are post positions or inflections or whatever you want to call them. Japanese clause structure isn't SOV with certain particles fixed to the verb or other specific places in the sentence. It's just V and you can optionally tack additional arguments (with post position particles) in front in any order you like. A Japanese clause can basically be described as something like Xa Yb Zc V, with a,b,c representing particles. These clauses can then be nested and attached in various ways. Japanese doesn't have adjectives, just subordinate clauses.

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merlin.codex Wrote:Try to come up with a few examples yourself (not just copy them from the internet), and you'll see my point.

Surely, if I just made my own examples they wouldn't constitute as proof... I googled it to find examples that demonstrate natives don't follow your made-up grammar rule.

merlin.codex Wrote:About your 1st example... 「～をしたいこと」 comes from 「～をしなければならないこと」, ...

um...why?

merlin.codex Wrote:Of course, 「～という」 can be preceded by 「～は」, but not if you want to follow the correct structure of the sentence, since the author already used 「～を」 before that.

you're not making any sense...は is totally fine in that sentence, the writer is using it contrastively, shifting the focus to something else. A is B but as for C (change of focus)...

merlin.codex Wrote:you don't want your sentence to look like shit, and you want to use 「こと」 afterwards, use 「～という」.

uhuh. You realise it's not my sentence right...? That sentence was just one of the 8 million+ (presumedly native) examples that popped up when I googled "をしたいこと" which you said is incorrect.

merlin.codex Wrote:Try to come up with a sentence with the following pattern →　「～をしたい仕事」、「～を見たい映画」、「～をやりたい女」 (this is actually a hint to why your 2nd example works; try putting another "living thing" before 「～を」) and see what you'll get.

Yeah nobody is going to say "a job that wants to ~" or "a movie that wants to watch ~" but I fail to see how that proves your point. The reason you won't find those examples is they semantically don't make sense, not that there's any grammatical rule that prevents you from putting こと or a noun after "~をしたい" or your assertion that using が magically turns したい into an adjective.

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merlin.codex Wrote:If you made the examples yourself, you'd notice the patterns which aren't applicable. That's why.

No I wouldn't because unlike you I wouldn't deliberately construct sentences that don't make semantic sense in order to prove the existence of a non-existant grammar rule. According to your logic, the example "The movie watched a man" proves you can't put a noun in front of a verb in English. It doesn't prove anything, it's just a nonsense sentence.

merlin.codex Wrote:It's a famous research. You should probably look at it first.

Well, how about you give me a link..?

merlin.codex Wrote:I saw many of the sentences myself. Some of them sound quite off (even if I'm no native). And I'm pretty sure there are many non-natives who write in Japanese on the internet. The language itself is complicated so if a native writes something which isn't entirely correct but says otherwise, not many would doubt him.

Yeah, sometimes natives make mistakes, but what makes you so sure those 8 million+ hits are all incorrect?

merlin.codex Wrote:In English, "I threw the red ball to him" can be converted into "I threw the ball, which was red, to him".
"A very wanted job" -> "A job which is very wanted"

Yes but we don't have to because English has adjectives...what's your point?

merlin.codex Wrote:You are just trying to define/compare everything you know about Japanese through/with English (or whatever your native language is).

You're the one that's doing that, by your assumption that if it modifies a noun then it must be an adjective.

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merlin.codex Wrote:Oh yeah, when you google 「普通に難しい」 with quotes, you get around 10,000,000 hits. When you think about it, it's incorrect （which one is it, actually? Is it normal or is it hard?), yet many people use it. So google isn't always the best answer although it is most of the times (hey, isn't this an exception to the general rule!?)

Err, isn't this just using 普通 as an adverb? It's the same construction as すごく難しい but with a な-adjective in place of an い-adjective.

The Internet is a bad corpus to use to prove the (prescriptive) grammatical correctness of something.

Do you think Japanese argue that you're and your are the same word based on YouTube comments?

To bad there isn't a free corpus of modern published works and newspapers.

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merlin.codex Wrote:「普通」 is actually a noun (ex: 普通の女の子）

Hahaha, whoops. Time to go silent again.

merlin.codex Wrote:「普通」 is actually a noun (ex: 普通の女の子） although it can be used with 「に」. Many people use such phrases although they are considered to be jargon. Go to Japan and ask a university teacher if it's correct. I dare you

My copy of 広辞苑 lists 普通に in the examples, which kind of makes it seem correct in any meaningful sense. Also, I know a Japanese university teacher (at Kyoto Ritsumeikan) who I'm meeting for dinner tomorrow, so if you want I can take you up on the challenge.

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You have said, and still have written after your edit, that it's 'jargon.' I'm not sure 100% what you mean, since if you look up 'jargon' in an English dictionary I think you'll find that it doesn't mean what you think it does. I assume you mean that it's 'technically incorrect but used colloquially.'

But, that would make it awfully strange for it to appear in 広辞苑, which is sort of the Japanese equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary. 普通に seems to be correct and not be a colloquialism.

There are multiple meanings of 普通に. If it means "normally" that's not slang, but if it means "unexpectedly" or "very", that's slang.

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Jargon usually means highly technical or specialist language or terminology thereof, not things such as slang or the "incorrect" speech of youth/gyaru.

See: here for more examples.

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As was I. Jargon doesn't mean slang.

Jargon: 非絶縁増幅器 = non-isolated amplifier　／　グロスター = global study team
Slang: 大丈ばない = I'm not ok　／　全然いい = no problem
etc.

One involves creation of new terms out of necessity or creating abbreviations for ease of discourse, the other is creative use of language for personal expression and to mark your membership of a social group.

Communicative vs Emotive

The only similarity is that they are often unintelligible to outsiders.

In any case this is off-topic.