Hey guys, could someone help me clear up this sentence?

「お前が教授《プロフェッサー》を呼んでくるしかねぇよ、トゥイードルディ。俺ぁ、勝手に外部に回線を開いたりして、廃棄処分にされたかないからな」

It looks like you're going to have to call the professor, Tweedledee. That's because if I do things like connecting to the outside line without permission I might get scrapped.

What is going on in that conjugation? Is it just された か ない （か） から な with the second か omitted?

Last edited by FooSoft (2011 June 07, 11:02 am)

tylerdevlin wrote:

I saw this phrase and translation in my textbook:

成績はどんどん良くなっていった。
My grades rapidly improved.

I was wondering how the "いく" part of "なっていった" changes the meaning of the sentence.  I don't think that the given translation captures the entire meaning of the phrase.  All help is appreciated.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/teform

Check the section "Using motion verbs".

nest0r wrote:

From Rikaichan:

良くなって    良くなる    よくなる    (exp,v5r,uk) to become better; to improve

ていった form can also mean ‘had done the action’ (see JMW p. 153), e.g.:

“the past form kiite ita can be either ‘was/were listening [at a particular time]’ or ‘had heard [before then]’... ”

(Another example in that section is 読んでいた can mean either ‘was reading [at a particular time]’ or ‘had read [before then]’, depending on context.)

いった =/= ita

Last edited by fakewookie (2011 June 07, 11:48 am)

Sorry, but I still don't completely understand.

It was definitely "ていった" in the book so either that's a typo, or nest0r is wrong.
I checked out the Tae Kim link but he only cited two examples and in both of them the "ていく" part was in the present tense.  I have trouble grasping the meaning of this construction when it's in the past tense.  How can there be a progression towards the future, in the past.  Wouldn't it be a progression towards the present and therefore use "てくる"?

Again, I apologize if this is something really trivial or obvious but I just can't get a handle on it.

tylerdevlin wrote:

I checked out the Tae Kim link but he only cited two examples and in both of them the "ていく" part was in the present tense.  I have trouble grasping the meaning of this construction when it's in the past tense.  How can there be a progression towards the future, in the past.  Wouldn't it be a progression towards the present and therefore use "てくる"?

Rather than thinking of it as 'progression towards the future', it's probably better to think of it as 'progression away from the reference time point'. So (to pick an example from the DoBJG) その頃から日本の経済は強くなって行った "the Japanese economy grew stronger from that point on" -- here the continuing change is relative to 'その頃'. DoBJG also says that the いく versions are generally more impersonal than the くる ones in cases where you could use either, which makes sense.

Obviously "now" is a really common choice of reference point, which is why ていく in the present tense and てきた in the past tense are so prevalent.

@nest0r: if you think a sentence has a typo in it, it's probably less confusing to start your answer with "I think that's a typo for foo" before providing a pile of references to foo...

Oh, right. When you said "the (what I assume to be typo'd) original sentence" I took that to mean that you had been and were still working on the (conscious) assumption that the original sentence had a typo...

Last edited by pm215 (2011 June 07, 5:09 pm)

I know what you mean; it does sound just slightly odd to me as well, taken as a single 'example' sentence without context.

pm215 wrote:

I know what you mean; it does sound just slightly odd to me as well, taken as a single 'example' sentence without context.

Unfortunately no context is provided.  ていく／ていった isn't even the what they're trying to highlight in the sentence.  The sentence is there to provide an example for the usage of どんどん.

tylerdevlin wrote:

pm215 wrote:

I know what you mean; it does sound just slightly odd to me as well, taken as a single 'example' sentence without context.

Unfortunately no context is provided.  ていく／ていった isn't even the what they're trying to highlight in the sentence.  The sentence is there to provide an example for the usage of どんどん.

Check this out: http://books.google.com/books?id=-02o0s … mp;f=false - Your texbook's example is definitely a little hinky.

Last edited by nest0r (2011 June 07, 6:45 pm)

If いった isn't what it's trying to show I guess it assumes that you already know what it means.

nest0r wrote:

fakewookie wrote:

There's nothing weird about it at all. It means "my grades continued to improve", or something to that effect. So maybe they started improving last month and continued improving for a few weeks.

tylerdevlin wrote:

It was definitely "ていった" in the book so either that's a typo, or nest0r is wrong.

The latter :p

@fakewookie - Uh huh. By the way, did you used to post on this forum under a different name?

Yeah, this is my new(er) account.

nest0r wrote:

FooSoft wrote:

Hey guys, could someone help me clear up this sentence?

「お前が教授《プロフェッサー》を呼んでくるしかねぇよ、トゥイードルディ。俺ぁ、勝手に外部に回線を開いたりして、廃棄処分にされたかないからな」

It looks like you're going to have to call the professor, Tweedledee. That's because if I do things like connecting to the outside line without permission I might get scrapped.

What is going on in that conjugation? Is it just された か ない （か） から な with the second か omitted?

Context?

According to KNP (which is never perfect), it's された　かない　から　な ...

I see it's from Mardock Scramble: The Second Combustion. Even with context I can't figure this one out, makes me realize how much I suck at Japanese. I would probably treat it as か (question) ない (negative) から (since/because) (な).

Edit: Could it be a transcription/OCR error and it's actually されたくない?

Last edited by nest0r (2011 June 08, 9:38 am)

nest0r wrote:

nest0r wrote:

FooSoft wrote:

Hey guys, could someone help me clear up this sentence?

「お前が教授《プロフェッサー》を呼んでくるしかねぇよ、トゥイードルディ。俺ぁ、勝手に外部に回線を開いたりして、廃棄処分にされたかないからな」

It looks like you're going to have to call the professor, Tweedledee. That's because if I do things like connecting to the outside line without permission I might get scrapped.

What is going on in that conjugation? Is it just された か ない （か） から な with the second か omitted?

Context?

According to KNP (which is never perfect), it's された　かない　から　な ...

I see it's from Mardock Scramble: The Second Combustion. Even with context I can't figure this one out, makes me realize how much I suck at Japanese. I would probably treat it as か (question) ない (negative) から (since/because) (な).

Edit: Could it be a transcription/OCR error and it's actually されたくない?

Yeah, I was going to say, the context for that sentence is a bit difficult. It's a cyber-augmented dolphin asking his gay human boyfriend if he would go and ask the professor to get permission to use the super computer (which is actually a swimming pool) to dig up some data on a killer's past

The thought that it could be an OCR error had occurred to me, but usually that only happens with kanji, but it's possible that sometimes it happens with hiragana as well (or maybe just a typo). I kind of broke it up like you did, but I haven't seen grammar used like that so I was curious if it was some sort of pattern.

Edit: Really fun series of books. Definitely a step up in difficulty from 1Q84 but I love cyberpunk

Last edited by FooSoft (2011 June 08, 11:02 am)

Tolerence91 wrote:

香具師     やし    (n) showman; charlatan; faker; quack
香具師 こうぐし(n) master perfume maker

Why is this 2 words?
Why does the first word have 2 kana, yet 3 kanji. strangest thing I've seen thus far O_O

Seems like both words refer to strange showmen or merchants who perform in public spaces, and both have the same conotation (in other words, your dictionary was wrong to give them different meanings).  Since those showmen are often quacks or fakers, the word can also refer to that.  One thing they commonly used to make is perfume, hence the 'master perfume maker' meaning.

こうぐし is the older, original pronunciation for the characters (literally coming from perfume こうぐ and master し).  But, today it is not commonly used (try typing it into Windows IME--those characters don't come up for me).

The pronunciation やし comes from other characters that mean the same thing.  People aren't sure which, but it's probably originally from either 薬師, 弥四, or 野士 (they are all pronounced やし in this context).  Or it might be an abbreviation of 山師 (やまし).  In other words, people started using new kanji for an older kanji combination, even though the pronunciation is only two mora.

When I looked it up I also read that やし is often used instead of 奴 on 2chan.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 June 09, 12:26 am)

Hey guys, just want to get some clarification about the following sentence:

寝ているホームレスの人のそばを、近くの会社で働いている人が毎日急いで通ります。

Am I correct in thinking that the を particle is used as it's effectively marking a location for 通る because it's a motion verb, even though it's intransitive?

So it basically says something like: "Every day, people working at nearby companies hurriedly pass by beside sleeping homeless people."

Thanks!