The passive, the potential, and the potential-passive

[Tracel]

Please don't take my word for it. I am probably wrong . I didn't look up all the words themselves but they seem to be listed in my dictionary as well. I just have never seen them used like that at all. So yomi, hanashi, and oyogi are all there, sorry. How they would be used, and if they can be used just like any other noun, I have no idea. So I am just going to shut up now, and hopefully someone who really knows what they are talking about can take over. お願いね先生。

Tracel

[community.japanese]

小狼さん、マイケルさん、トラさん、Teabagさん、
こんにちは。

I wonder if Natsuko-sensei would give her input on this topic. I am really making educated guesses here, so I don't know what the answer really is.

はい、おそくなってすみません。 I'd join this thread happily

Actually, as I follow the posts, all important things were well explained.
So, very well done and thank you very much for a brilliant forum thread!

One thing I noticed in comparison to English is that it could make confusion.
父は刺身が食べられます。Regarding my father, sashimi is eatable (or can be eaten).
If you use "can be eaten" to understand this sentence, it'd be confusing because that takes passive voice
while Japanese would be maybe "potential". There's of course a possibility of passive, just like the
example of カラスに However, in that case, the particle would be を to be more correct.

小狼さん mentioned in the first post about "except 見る", but I'd say that basic is applicable to any verbs of
Ichidan including 見る
The recent tendency of Ichidan verbs is to drop ら from られる only when we use this form with the meaning
of potential to make the meaning clear. So, you'd probably see and/or hear a lot 見れる、食べれる、着れる etc.
This was not the original usage. Whether or not this is "correct" is controversial, but it's still considered as incorrect.

As to ～得る, not all sentences can have this expression. It'd be more limited than ことができる and （ら）れる
to say "can do". It'd be closer to the meaning of "it's possible to...." and not capability of someone.

Let's see the book sentences:
1. この英語の本を読めます。 I can read this English book.
2. この日本語の本が読めます。
=> This sentence is 90% understood as "I can read this Japanese book."
3. この日本語の本は読めます。
=> Again, this would probably mean "I can read this Japanese book (although there are some books I can't).

The meaning of れる・られる expressions needs to be judged and understood from the context.
If not, there're many possibilities and all of them are probably right.
As long as the sentence is grammatically correct and there's a situation we can use that sentence,
that sentence can be totally correct.
However, I don't see any situation to use この本は読み得ます。
And, 読み得る itself would be very difficult to be used; like I wrote above, it's closer to "it's possible", which means
this 得る has a meaning of possibility or chance. What can be the reason for "possibility"? Maybe limited time?
We might still think "capability" to read this book by the end of limited time.

Now, what did I miss to answer...? For now, I'd focus on those matters because my comment is
becoming long now.
If I missed some important questions, please remind me!

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[thegooseking]

奈津子先生,

Thanks once more for your insights!

One thing I noticed in comparison to English is that it could make confusion.
父は刺身が食べられます。Regarding my father, sashimi is eatable (or can be eaten).
If you use "can be eaten" to understand this sentence, it'd be confusing because that takes passive voice
while Japanese would be maybe "potential". There's of course a possibility of passive, just like the
example of カラスに However, in that case, the particle would be を to be more correct.

Yes, I understand now that in Japanese, unlike English, "can be done" is just potential, not passive and potential. This is what people tried to tell me, but I resisted it To them I have to say: ごめんなさい. This principle can actually be seen in Godan verbs a lot more easily than Ichidan verbs. "Readable / Can be read" is simply 書ける, not something like 書けられる or even 書かれられる ( )

小狼さん mentioned in the first post about "except 見る", but I'd say that basic is applicable to any verbs of
Ichidan including 見る
The recent tendency of Ichidan verbs is to drop ら from られる only when we use this form with the meaning
of potential to make the meaning clear. So, you'd probably see and/or hear a lot 見れる、食べれる、着れる etc.
This was not the original usage. Whether or not this is "correct" is controversial, but it's still considered as incorrect.

One thing that I notice about this is that dropping the ら makes the Ichidan verb look a lot like a Godan verb. That's how you would conjugate the potential if they were Godan verbs. I can sort of understand that as a trend towards regularisation - this has definitely happened before in Japanese (after all, Kami Nidan, Shimo Nidan, Yodan and a lot of irregulars have basically been absorbed into Ichidan and Godan). I can also understand why it's controversial, but I wonder if getting rid of Kami Nidan, Shimo Nidan and Yodan were also controversial at the time...

However, I don't see any situation to use この本は読み得ます。
And, 読み得る itself would be very difficult to be used; like I wrote above, it's closer to "it's possible", which means
this 得る has a meaning of possibility or chance. What can be the reason for "possibility"? Maybe limited time?
We might still think "capability" to read this book by the end of limited time.

Maybe one (quite specific) situation would be if you're talking to someone who keeps claiming they're going to write a book, but never gets round to it? Then you might be able to say:-

この本は書かなければ、読み得ません。
"If you don't write this book, then it can't be read."

In that case, being able to read it has nothing to do with ability; it has to do with the existence or non-existence of the book!

小狼

[Tracel]

奈津子先生, 小狼さん、マイケルさん、Teabagさん、[長いリストになりましたね。]

However, I don't see any situation to use この本は読み得ます。
And, 読み得る itself would be very difficult to be used; like I wrote above, it's closer to "it's possible", which means　this 得る has a meaning of possibility or chance. What can be the reason for "possibility"? Maybe limited time? We might still think "capability" to read this book by the end of limited time.

そうですね。前の文書が全部本についている例だったから、まえとの同じ形を保ったほうがいいと思いました。私の考え方では、この(本)がすごく古くて、被害を受けた本のページで，字が今でも読むことができる意味がほしかったのです。言語学的な人類学者のように本を見る方法というわけですね。

Oh,　OK.　Because in all of the previous sentences the examples were about books, I thought it was better to maintain the same format as them. The way I was thinking about it, I wanted the meaning of, this "book" was very old, and the characters were still readable on the damaged pages of the book. The way a linguistic anthropologist would look at a book.　

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Now, what did I miss to answer...? For now, I'd focus on those matters because my comment is
becoming long now.
If I missed some important questions, please remind me!

長い答えを書かせてしまって、ごめんなさいです。 でも、もう一つの質問があります。
It is about making a verb into a noun.　

小狼さん　Found this advice in his dictionary:

Ah, I see. I did wonder. My grammar book calls the い-base the "noun-forming base" and uses examples like 話 and はじめ to illustrate forming nouns using just the base, but it doesn't really explain whether that's an across-the-board thing or just in a few cases. (Actually, it doesn't say very much about it at all.) It sounds like you're saying it's the latter.

But I cannot find anything about this grammar point anywhere in my grammar books to show me how it is used . Can you make a noun out of every verb by just using the 'noun-forming base'? If so, then how is that used and when?



小狼さん、

Yes, I understand now that in Japanese, unlike English, "can be done" is just potential, not passive and potential. This is what people tried to tell me, but I resisted it To them I have to say: ごめんなさい. This principle can actually be seen in Godan verbs a lot more easily than Ichidan verbs. "Readable / Can be read" is simply 書ける, not something like 書けられる or even 書かれられる ( )

Please do not apologize . I personally really like grammar and all of its intricacies, so when something new comes up and I have to question what I thought was correct, I enjoy the challenge. This time around, I was getting in over my head and had no confidence in my statements anymore. That is why I thought we had better wait for 奈津子先生　to come and help us out.

By the way, I don't want to scare you, but you can get some very long verb endings when you combine the causative and the passive together. Mwahahah.

読めさせられました。I was forced to read.
食べさせられました。I was forced to eat.

お元気で、
トラ

[thegooseking]

トラさん、

読めさせられました。I was forced to read.
食べさせられました。I was forced to eat.

How about 食べさせださられつづけなければ - If I don't continue to be suddenly made to eat?

小狼

[thegooseking]

Here is a (fairly old) blog post about 'ra-nuki' (as I have now learned it is called). I think I must have read this post before, but I guess it was back when I didn't really know much about Japanese, so it didn't mean much to me at the time.

I have also learned that this doesn't apply to all Ichidan verbs. For instance, even people who use ra-nuki a lot mostly (something like 80%) won't say something like 考えれる for the potential "can think"; it's always 考えられる. There's probably a rule there, but I'm not sure what it is. The above-linked blogger suggested that maybe if the last mora of the stem doesn't have a consonant, the ら doesn't get dropped, but I think that was just a suggestion.

小狼

[community.japanese]

小狼さん、トラさん、

One thing that I notice about this is that dropping the ら makes the Ichidan verb look a lot like a Godan verb. That's how you would conjugate the potential if they were Godan verbs. I can sort of understand that as a trend towards regularisation - this has definitely happened before in Japanese (after all, Kami Nidan, Shimo Nidan, Yodan and a lot of irregulars have basically been absorbed into Ichidan and Godan). I can also understand why it's controversial, but I wonder if getting rid of Kami Nidan, Shimo Nidan and Yodan were also controversial at the time...

You know about those "old Japanese" grammar!? Wow!
I agree with your wondering... Japanese is a language that has been changing a lot over the time
and this "dripping ら" tendency is not discussed as often as some years ago. Now, there's another tendency
(which I consider completely incorrect and yet many people use that "incorrect" way officially).

Thank you for interesting insights about この本は読み得る。
"If you don't write this book, then it can't be read."
"this 'book' was very old, and the characters were still readable on the damaged pages of the book."
One big difference from 読める or 読むことができる is "possibility" and this is usually up to the speaker.
Both ways of taking 読み得る are very interesting, but in both cases "possibility" depends on "the result" and
"the condition of book", not speaker's will. I wonder if we actually use "potential" expression to say
"If you don't write this book, then it can't be read." Maybe I'd say 本を書かなければ、その本が読まれることは
ありません。 This is rather conditional where the result (= the book being read) will happen for sure.
And if the book was very old and damaged but still readable, I'd say
この本は読めます。ORこの本は読める状態です。In this case, there's no possibility "not to be able to read",
but when we use し得る, there are practically both possibilities to do and not to do.

As to making nouns from verbs, I think it's safe to say "yes"; you can make nouns using the base 小狼さん
explained. However, I'm not 100% sure what kind of nouns you want to make. Is this about [verb]+始める
or [verb]+かける kind of pattern? If so, it's rather "stem of ます form".
はなす　becoming はなし seems to be fine with い base, but for example, たべる won't become たべり
in any case. Am I understanding the question right...?

By the way, I don't want to scare you, but you can get some very long verb endings when you combine the causative and the passive together. Mwahahah.
読めさせられました。I was forced to read.
食べさせられました。I was forced to eat.

True!
But the first sentence would be 読まされました or 読ませられました
(because the causative form for 読む is 読ませる and there's also causative verb 読ます)
Very long endings often has to do with causative + passive or giving/receiving expressions.
It's just to have fun; don't be scared

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[community.japanese]

P.S.

How about 食べさせださられつづけなければ - If I don't continue to be suddenly made to eat?

???
食べさせられ続けなければ？Maybe? You successfully made me lost in translation

Natsuko(奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[Tracel]

Thank you for interesting insights about この本は読み得る。
"If you don't write this book, then it can't be read."
"this 'book' was very old, and the characters were still readable on the damaged pages of the book."
One big difference from 読める or 読むことができる is "possibility" and this is usually up to the speaker.
Both ways of taking 読み得る are very interesting, but in both cases "possibility" depends on "the result" and　"the condition of book", not speaker's will. I wonder if we actually use "potential" expression to say　"If you don't write this book, then it can't be read." Maybe I'd say 本を書かなければ、その本が読まれることはありません。 This is rather conditional where the result (= the book being read) will happen for sure.
And if the book was very old and damaged but still readable, I'd say　この本は読めます。ORこの本は読める状態です。In this case, there's no possibility "not to be able to read",　but when we use し得る, there are practically both possibilities to do and not to do.

As to making nouns from verbs, I think it's safe to say "yes"; you can make nouns using the base 小狼さん　explained. However, I'm not 100% sure what kind of nouns you want to make. Is this about [verb]+始める　or [verb]+かける kind of pattern? If so, it's rather "stem of ます form".　はなす　becoming はなし seems to be fine with い base, but for example, たべる won't become たべり　in any case. Am I understanding the question right...?

And if the book was very old and damaged but still readable, I'd say　この本は読めます。ORこの本は読める状態です。In this case, there's no possibility "not to be able to read",　but when we use し得る, there are practically both possibilities to do and not to do.

奈津子先生、今「し得る」と(ことができる・られる)の違いがよくわかると思います。有難うございます 。

As to making nouns from verbs, Am I understanding the question right...?

はい、先生は私たちの質問を分かってくださってよかったです。


では、お元気で、
トラ:blob:

[Tracel]

P.S.

True!
But the first sentence would be 読まされました or 読ませられました
(because the causative form for 読む is 読ませる and there's also causative verb 読ます)
Very long endings often has to do with causative + passive or giving/receiving expressions.
It's just to have fun; don't be scared

あら、もう一度間違いました！やっぱりもっと頑張らなきゃなりませんね。この頃、Lower Intermediateのシーゾン六を勉強しています。クリスさんの日本語の能力がすごいですね。羨ましいわ。シーゾン六の文法説明と練習は大好きです。

トラ

[community.japanese]

トラさん、
前のコメントが役に立ってよかったです

日本語の受け身や使役はむずかしいですからねえ～。いっしょにがんばりましょう

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[Tracel]

I don't know about anyone else, but I am also having trouble keeping　the　'intransitive'　Japanese verbs and the 'passive' Japanese verbs separate in my head. They seem to both translate into a passive English aspect most often.

トラ

[community.japanese]

トラさん、
that's possible.

Well, if you fancy praciticing or if you need help in clarification, you're always welcome

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com