I have another sentence question(s)

猫たちは遊び道具のグッズとゴハンに惹きつけられてやってきます

I was wondering for this “惹きつけられて” what forms is this word in based on the sentence? I see て form, but when I tried looking it up, apparently for ichidan verbs, potential and passive form look the same. Any ideas?

Edit: The sentence is more like “Cats are attracted to toys and rice” as it is from the ねこあつめ “Kitty Collector”. My apologies for not adding context

Edit 2: Also is やってきます “やる”?

In the case of ichidan verbs, you can only go by context and by grammar cues to distinguish the two cases.

In this case, context should be sufficient to determine whether it would be “cats can attract food and toys” or “cats are attracted by food and toys” :wink:

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It’s the former. Cats just have to look cute, and food and toys just gravitate towards them.

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Is it even possible to grammatically interpret as the former, on account of the に?

Like, to create a simpler example リンゴに食べられる can only mean “eaten by apples” (such a horrible fate! :cry:) while “able to eat apples” would be リンゴを食べられる or リンゴが食べられる, right?

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The potential goes with が afaik, so it would be the second one. But yeah, I should have said, “if we only look at the context ignoring the grammar cues”. I don’t feel so strongly about に because it can appear in lots of situations (so it being present could also mean that it’s present for other reasons, I guess), but not having が with something that qualifies as the target definitely would indicate to me that it can’t be potential.

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Can go both ways!

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I thought so too, but then both sounded right in my mind, and when I tried to google, both versions seemed to have a decent number of hits so I think maybe both are right… (I think I might have been told this at some point even, but not sure) :man_shrugging:

Well, there you go! :slight_smile:

I can’t think of what it could signify in this particular sentence though, apart from it being the thing that the passive verb is done by.

I agree with the general point though, that you’ll be able to tell from context. I just started thinking about why I didn’t even see the potential as a valid option until it was pointed out later.

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Random aside, but I just realized that this…

…could also be the suffering passive. As in あいつに美味しいリンゴを食べられた!(My delicious apples were eaten but that guy!)

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:exploding_head:

Well, I need to get back to my books, I guess :rofl:

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I think this is actually a case of the opposite :slight_smile: I think I was told by the books that it’s が, but then experience gave me the feeling that を sounded just fine as well!

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Or it could be keigo :rofl: “Mylord feasted on the apple” or something.

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It can? Never heard of it!

Passive is the weakest of the three (I think?) forms of honorifics.

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なるほど!勉強になりましたね!:slight_smile:

Makes sense though, less direct becomes more polite, similar to how you can say になる etc.

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