I’m struggling a bit with the すぎる grammar as both the base verb and すぎる can take on negation. The bunpro grammar point was fairly decent but doesn’t talk enough about the nuance in my opinion. I wrote down an attempt to systematically go through all 4 possible positive and negative combinations:
お金がありすぎる (pos-pos): This means “having too much money” or “an excessive amount of money”. The nuance here is that the person has more money than they need or know what to do with, and it could be considered excessive.
お金がありすぎない (pos-neg): This means “not having too much money” or “not an excessive amount of money.” The nuance here is that the person has an appropriate or reasonable amount of money, and it is not considered excessive.
お金がなさすぎる (neg-pos): This means “not having enough money” or “too little money”. The nuance here is that the person does not have enough money to do something, or the amount of money they have is too small for a certain purpose.
お金がなさすぎない (neg-neg): This means “not lacking money too much” or “not too little money”. The nuance here is that the person has enough money to do something or the amount of money they have is sufficient for a certain purpose.
Is this grammatically correct and I captured the nuance well enough or am I missing something?
Its grammatically correct but it seems like you are missing that 2 and 4 wouldn’t be used for the meaning you said and would have the ない be used as an affirmative if anything.
That’s definitely the most common thing, but I did find a few uses of Xがありすぎない not as a question but meaning “not too much”, eg the caption to one of the photos for a dress rental website describes it as 光沢がありすぎない上品な雰囲気の生地です。
(“お金がありすぎない” and “お金がなさすぎない” specifically get one google hit between them, incidentally.)
I’m afraid I don’t get your explanation. It “would have the ない be used as an affirmative if anything”? I’m not sure, I’m not advanced enough to get what you are referring to.
In Japanese, negative form is often used to ask a question like:
一緒に公園に行かない？ (Natural translation) Would you like to go to the park with me? (It doesn’t need to have a question mark at the end btw, it would be clear as a question anyway.)
So I think that is the kinda thing @Vanilla is driving at in this case. That it becomes either a question like that in the affirmative, or something like ね or in English “isn’t that right?” kinda vibe.
彼はトイレに行かなさすぎない。
He doesn’t not go to the toilet enough. (A double negative that becomes positive)
and
ゲームセンターには行きすぎないでね。
Don’t go to the arcade too often. (The negative focus is on ‘too much’, and sounds more like a request)
This corresponds to case 4 and 2 above and are the ones that were also pointed out by @Vanilla, ending in a negative すぎない. ‘Interestingly’ the bunpro nuance doesn’t match my nuance in the OP and also not the question nuance y’all proposed.
According to the question nuance, I’d read the first one as “doesn’t he go to the toilet enough?” and the second as “You don’t go to the arcade enough?”
I’m not sure, I think I feel more confused than before. Maybe there is some rigorous grammar textbook that disentangles this
This one does match your nuance from the post, and as @pm215 mentioned, this nuance is used (if less often). The English translation also uses a double negative (something that is easy to miss “doesn’t not”), so what it does say is “He does go to the toilet enough” meaning an appropriate or reasonable amount, to use your words from the OP.
Ah, but this uses the construction of ないで(ください) and is therefore a command to not do something. 行かないで is “don’t go” for example. Or in this case 行きすぎないで means “go not too much”, aka go a reasonable amount of times. So still fits the nuance you mentioned.
