迎える(to go out to meet) is an motion verb like 行く and 帰える and uses other particles than existance verbs.

According to the Dirty Guide to Japanese:

In general, word order in Japanese sentences using an action verb is:
[SUBJECT] + TIME + PLACE/IMPLEMENT + INDIRECT OBJECT + OBJECT + ACTION VERB

For an existence verb it is:
[SUBJECT] + TIME + LOCATION + EXISTENCE VERB

And for a motion verb it is:
[SUBJECT] + TIME + ORIGIN + ROUTE + DESTINATION + MOTION VERB

...

In summary:
SUBJECT + は/が/nothing     delete subject if possible, show changes with は
TIME + に/nothing          use nothing if it's a deictic time word
PLACE/IMPLEMENT + で     is the place where you do or where you are?
LOCATION + に               is the place where you are or where you do?
ORIGIN + から    
ROUTE + を          is this a place on the way to where you're going?
DESTINATION + に/へ     use に over へ but be aware that both are okay
(DIRECT) OBJECT+を    
INDIRECT OBJECT + に     use this if you're out of choices :-)

As you can see, a motion verb like 迎える cannot use で since you are moving between two different places and is not staying at the same place.

I think, thinking about grammar like that just makes it more confusing. Just learn the sentence and it will make sense one day

bombpersons wrote:

I think, thinking about grammar like that just makes it more confusing. Just learn the sentence and it will make sense one day

I second this.  Focusing on the grammar is futile.  Once you go through enough sentences in your SRS you will have a feel for the difference, which is worlds better than being able to explain the grammar behind them.  Because when you are zooming through a book, you won't be thinking about the grammar.

How many sentences have you done btw?

zazen666 wrote:

I always though of "に"　as meaning "--->" and that seems to more or less work for me .....

To me that screams more へ.....

When I think of で I tend to think of the two things interacting with each other.

に still boggles the bajeezus out of me.（失敗）

@jacf29:   Developing a sense of what sounds correct through exposure doesn't mean sentence analysis is "futile". Both is better than either.  Also, we can learn Japanese w/o SRSing sentences (though perhaps you meant exposure more generally.)

I personally find dissecting structures and grammars vital. I took the 'don't waste time on textbooks, you have to "feel" it by yourself' route and, while I learnt a load of words and readings, it never felt like English to me (using that in the sense of my fluent language, not similarities to English). Now it slowly is.

One downside of self-study is that there's noone there to tell you your doing something right or not. Viewpoints should seem like an obvious aspect of a language and for some people it probably is. But is it you? Me? The person I emphasize with? The cat on the wall? I need something to explain things like that to me for the sake of clarification sometimes.

Tae Kim was great for getting me a foot into the language but his teaching style doesn't really suit my type of person. に = "towards" just doesn't work for me, I need to be told it means "by," "from," and all the ones in between. I thought Japanese was some mysterious, abstract language only suited for those with double-jointed brains. Then I opened up a damn grammar book and was told about how it works in a practical manner.

yudantaiteki wrote:

Virtua_Leaf wrote:

I personally find dissecting structures and grammars vital.

I agree.  I took the "don't focus too much on grammar" approach at first, and while I was able to make a lot of progress and learn to read real Japanese, I found that when I eventually went back and did a more thorough study of the grammar, it improved my reading speed and comprehension a lot.  A number of assumptions that I had about Japanese grammar turned out to be wrong, and things that I thought I knew I actually didn't.  The problem with inferring grammar from reading a lot of sentences is that it's easy to infer things incorrectly.

You'll never learn Japanese just by reading a grammar book, and you should definitely be reading Japanese a lot more than reading grammar, but judicious use of grammatical explanations can really go a long way towards helping you make sense of what you're seeing and get a handle on fine points in the language.

Completely agree.

I have another question here.

新聞によるとフロリダに雪が降ったそうだ。

Why is に used here and not で? I would have thought 雪が降った would have been seen as an event. Is it stressing that the snow existed in Florida? OR... hang on a minute, now I've written this, is it the に that signifies something ON something? Literally "the snow fell ON Florida"?

Googling "(で/に)雪が降った", most of the results use に but there are a few using で:

マダガスカルで雪が降った

I think it's supposed to have a direct feel. に used in this case means the snow fell on Florida. で would have more of a in/at feel.

Well, I don't know about sources, so I'll use that Wikipedia article's examples and say what I think about them.

学校にいる。
This is the example of に working as a location of an action. But this is a static action. Actions usually are only placed with に for their whereabouts if they're verbs for existence. (Not counting direction function in this case.)

I see where we see a difference in that Wikipedia lists it as an indirect object. Well, I would agree it is an indirect object, but it is more direct than で where it is not an object of the action at all. If our wordings confused each other, then I'm sorry.

But in any case, I believe it's serving the indirect object function stated in the article rather than the location. Whereas で would be carrying out the location function.

(Indirect object, location, direction, and intent functions all have the same feel with に for me though.)

Last edited by Smackle (2009 October 05, 1:47 pm)

Ah, so I kind of had it backwards. Thanks for the explanations. The 「に」particle has certainly proven itself elusive.