It can’t be a ring the lover bought for him because the direction of giving would be wrong for あげる, which is the ‘in-group gives to out-group’ giving verb; also for あげる the に marks recipient, not giver. This is true whether it’s the plain “physically giving an object” or the “aux verb about doing an action for somebody else”. To get the meaning that it is the lover doing the buying you would need to have 恋人が plus くれる, or else もらう if you wanted to keep the に.
To answer the actual question, I think 買ってあげた can either mean (a) sequence of actions “bought and then gave” or else (b) “bought for somebody” but the meaning is super close between the two almost all the time (in English if I say “I bought my girlfriend a ring” I’m usually implicitly saying I gave it to her, similarly). I think that for it to be the sequence-of-actions meaning, the に clause, if any, must come after 買って : so in this case we know it’s the auxiliary-verb, not two separate actions.
I have a question about one of the example sentences given in WK for 交じる.
Here’s the sentence:
空と海が交じるところが、世かいのはてなのさ。
The place where the sky and the sea meet is the edge of the world.
Here’s my breakdown:
空と海が - sky & sea + identifier particle
交じる - to be mixed
ところが - place + identifier particle
世かいの - world’s
はてなのさ - this is my problem… somewhere in this mix of hiragana is the word “edge” and some grammar no doubt, but I can’t make head not tails of it. If someone could help that would be very kind! Thank you!
It breaks down as はて and then なの to make it explanatory since hate is a noun it connects with na to no, that just leaves sa, an ending particle to give it all some more flair. Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary
(and rhyme somewhat with the ga particle)
Yeah, the direction being wrong is why it was that I blanked. I realized quite soon afterwards that the old man was the one who did the buying, but my brain parsing it as “bought and then gave” plus the old man currently having the ring in his possession made me think for a moment that it was his lover who’d given it to him, before realizing that that’s not what it says.
(So it’s [giver]がくれる and [giver]にもらう? I’ll try to remember that, it’s those two that tend to give me the most trouble out of the giving/recipient trio, and BunPro hasn’t been helping.)
So if it were a sequence, it would be 買って恋人にあげた指輪, you’re saying?
Yes; もらう is the only one of the three which is a “receive” action and so has the recipient as subject and the giver marked by に (or not mentioned at all); the other two are both “give” actions where the subject is the giver and the recipient に-marked.
It looks a bit odd as a sequence that’s a subordinate clause modifying 指輪. I think I’m more saying the opposite - that if the に is before the 買って then it can’t be the sequence meaning.
There are no Google hits at all for 買って恋人にあげた so I am suspicious that we’ve wandered outside the realms of natural usage. It might be that the “buy for somebody” 買ってあげる is so strong and natural that in the odd case where you did want to say “first I bought it, and then I gave it to them” you’d just say it totally differently because you’d want to include the details that were explaining why the listener wants to know that buying and giving are separate actions (eg “I bought the ring on the Saturday but I waited until Wednesday to give it to her because I didn’t want to distract her before her archery competition on the Monday”.)
I have a question about one of the example sentences given in WK for 平気.
The sentence is:
よく平気でいられますね。
How come you’re always so calm?
The only thing I really understand is the 平気 part!
I think よく is “well”…
I think で means “with” as in “with calmness” perhaps…
I think いられます is a form of いる, possibly potential, “can be so calm”?..
And I have no idea why it ends in ね if it is actually a question…
… so, as you can see, I’m utterly lost. Any help much appreciated!
(And of course, now I’m kicking myself! I’ve seen ね used like that in Yotsuba and on anime etc, but for some reason it really threw me on a WK example sentence! I have no idea why! Perhaps partly, and to my shame, because I’ve never really looked at them before, but now I’m making sure I do! Thank you so much again!)
The use of よく here is also something you’ll probably encounter again. Although literally speaking it does mean “well”, EDICT lists it as a separate sense: “4. (you have) quite the nerve to; I don’t know how you can …”. So does daijisen:
Wow, that is some seriously advanced vocab there! Who’d have thought?! Thank you so much! Much appreciated! The whole sentence makes perfect sense now! Thank you!
I just assumed so from the translation that used “always” and I didn’t see why they’d use that otherwise, but I’ll admit, I don’t think I’ve seen the definition of よく you shared, so maybe it comes from that, or comes from making it a rhetorical question in English. (I do realize that always ≠ often, but it might sound better that way in translation.
You sure about that? “(you have) quite the nerve to” doesn’t mean that at all. That’s exasperation, not joy.
Fits with the monolingual definition (from 明鏡国語辞典) too:
相手の非常識な行為に対して、疑問や反感の気持ちを表す。
It’s not about unexpected pleasure, it’s more something like “how dare you”. I don’t think that sense fits here - it’s not like you’re questioning someone’s manners or common sense for keeping a cool head.
I’m not seeing any translations matching some kind of “unexpected pleasure” anywhere, honestly, unless I’m misinterpreting what you mean by it. But if by sense 4 you mean the one from EDICT, that’s absolutely exasperation - just look at the example sentence for it here.
With “unexpected pleasure”, @pm215 was talking about a different definition, not definition 5 which is quoted here (and which is used in the WK example sentence).
Definition 5 of よく in Daijisen states that this definition is contrary in meaning to definition 4 in Daijisen of よく (4を反語的にいう語).
While definition 5 (the one pm215 quoted) definitely has the nuance you’re referring to, definition 4 refers to the “unexpected pleasure” meaning of よく, such as in よく来てくれました.
I think it does. It’s frequently used together with the potential form, which makes me think it’s the “you have quite the nerve” nuance here. It doesn’t come across that well in the translation, sadly, and I’m not gonna try to offer a better nglish version. But the contempt in the Japanese version is definitely there imo.
“Often” doesn’t make much sense to me.