The sister, right? When she was sick, she insisted on being allowed to eat her favorite food, melon. (Literally, she took the initiative to have someone else allow her to eat the melon.) If someone else was doing the morau-ing, the sister would have ni instead of wa.
How come the question? (And I need a language geek icon.)
Nope, you're right (and I have the textbook answer sheet to prove it)! Question because I got into a bit of a discussion about whether the textbook answer was a misprint or not and I wanted validation from tEh IntrAnEts.
And really, don't we all need a language geek icon?
Sadly (?), it now occurs to me that I just yesterday saw an exact parallel to this construction on yaoi_daily. I would cite the example, but I'm not sure how smutty you want this thread to get. ^_^;;
Incidentally, Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese has a fantastic discussion of the -te morau issue and the problem of the "subjectless sentence" in general. I mentally reference it every time I get stuck on a sentence like this.
I'd looked this up in a grammar book (Makino and Tsutui's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar) and only wound up confused. I figured that Sister (wa) must be encouraging An Unstated Mystery Person (ni) to do the eating. Argh.
Rubin's book is fantastic. I can't recommend it enough.
-te morau usually means that the subject (marked with ga or wa) receives the benefit of someone else performing an action. In this case, the subject is ane, and the action is "allowing to eat," meaning someone else allowed eating and she received the benefit -- i.e. she was the one who was allowed to eat.
The two points that Rubin makes which I find really helpful are:
1. With -te morau, the subject of morau and the performer of the te verb will always be two different people.
2. Although receiving the benefit of an action sounds passive, in fact the person who morau's is the one taking the initiative to make the action happen, so it's not really passive at all. Hence the common translation "I got X to -te." It often has a feel of "I'm asking nicely, but I won't take no for an answer."
akujunkan, does that sound right to you? And did that help at all, or just make everything more confusing? ^_^
Saikin, I have been entertaining a string of nasty cold brought on by overexposure to youchien. That and obsessively (re)watching Onmyoji and Daejangeum. Yourself?
Hm. Seem to have been very busy doing...stuff. Hope you get over the colds. Hmm to Onmyogi, which while it shouldn't does remind me to ask if you ever watched that Korean porn, was it? The one that was supposed to be really bad.
Yes, I did indeed watch it. It was Korea's first foray into the shit Showtime specializes in. So alas, while it was bad it was blandly so, and teh horrah did not live up to the box.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2005-11-08 04:24 am (UTC)The sister, right? When she was sick, she insisted on being allowed to eat her favorite food, melon. (Literally, she took the initiative to have someone else allow her to eat the melon.) If someone else was doing the morau-ing, the sister would have ni instead of wa.
How come the question? (And I need a language geek icon.)
no subject
on 2005-11-08 11:17 am (UTC)And really, don't we all need a language geek icon?
no subject
on 2005-11-08 04:04 pm (UTC)Incidentally, Jay Rubin's Making Sense of Japanese has a fantastic discussion of the -te morau issue and the problem of the "subjectless sentence" in general. I mentally reference it every time I get stuck on a sentence like this.
no subject
on 2005-11-08 05:41 pm (UTC)I'd looked this up in a grammar book (Makino and Tsutui's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar) and only wound up confused. I figured that Sister (wa) must be encouraging An Unstated Mystery Person (ni) to do the eating. Argh.
no subject
on 2005-11-08 07:39 pm (UTC)-te morau usually means that the subject (marked with ga or wa) receives the benefit of someone else performing an action. In this case, the subject is ane, and the action is "allowing to eat," meaning someone else allowed eating and she received the benefit -- i.e. she was the one who was allowed to eat.
The two points that Rubin makes which I find really helpful are:
1. With -te morau, the subject of morau and the performer of the te verb will always be two different people.
2. Although receiving the benefit of an action sounds passive, in fact the person who morau's is the one taking the initiative to make the action happen, so it's not really passive at all. Hence the common translation "I got X to -te." It often has a feel of "I'm asking nicely, but I won't take no for an answer."
no subject
on 2005-11-08 09:07 pm (UTC)1. With -te morau, the subject of morau and the performer of the te verb will always be two different people.
Oh. So, in this case, it would be
Sister (wa) morau-ing
Unknown Person(s) (ni) let eat-ing
Then wouldn't this work? "watashi-tachi wa akujunkan no LJ o supamu-sasete itadaita"
no subject
on 2005-11-08 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-11-09 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-11-08 08:49 am (UTC)How you been doing anyway? Feel like I haven't talked to you in ages.
no subject
on 2005-11-08 11:19 am (UTC)Saikin, I have been entertaining a string of nasty cold brought on by overexposure to youchien. That and obsessively (re)watching Onmyoji and Daejangeum. Yourself?
no subject
on 2005-11-08 12:14 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-11-08 01:45 pm (UTC)