In number 8, why do you say が飲みたいですhere instead of を飲みたいです？
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One of the fun quirks of Japanese is that the addition of the ～たい auxiliary ending turns 飲む into an い-adjective. を marks the object of verbs, and so in the strictest grammar rules, we can no longer use it.
That said, in more casual usage, を does still get used - according to the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, “when the desire to do something is high, が is preferred; when it is low, を is used”. There are various circumstances where を can never be used, though.
Also, when we’re talking about someone else’s desire, it becomes 飲みたがる, which is a verb again, and が cannot be used.
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Not to be a needless contrarian because I think its perfectly fine to leaving it just at “das how it be”, but this does get me thinking.
If that really were the reason why you use が here almost always (and you definitely do), then couldn’t you say the same thing about all ない endings since that is also an い adjective? And yet, thats not the case.
×話が聞かない人が多い
〇話を聞かない人が多い
But make 聞く into potential form 聞ける and suddenly not only is が acceptable but its more common.
〇話を聞けない人が多い
◎話が聞けない人が多い
Now, I don’t actually have any answers and can only provide skepticism. I’m not even sure the answer would be worth pursing in the first place and I’m personally a fan of just accepting things for what they are. But there does seem to be a bit more to this whole thing…
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It really literally 1:1 means „Juice is drink-desirable”, not „I want to drink juice”, so が seems to fit better than を to me.
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Gotta be careful here. There are two ない endings, one an auxiliary verb and one an い-adjective. Though I’ll leave it to those with more knowledge to give examples.
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Hmm, yeah I don’t know. I’m ok with ない as in 食べない and 無い being different. But as far as japanese grammar is concerned I think both 食べない’s ない and 食べたい’s たい are both considered 助動詞 right? So either way they would be in the same boat. I don’t know enough about grammar to know if a meaningful distinction can be made between them
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Went ahead and looked it up to remind myself. No, the ない that can be replaced by ません (so forming the negation of verbs) is not an い-adjective. The ない that forms the negation of い-adjectives is the one that is itself an い-adjective.
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Yeah, wouldn’t it be a 助動詞 like I just said?
My point is that you can apply that same logic to たい either way.
If you take the western grammar view and say 飲みたい is conjugated like an い adjective and thus the particle change, you should be able to say the same about 飲まない.
if you take the japanese grammar view and say that its because the 助動詞 たい is attached to it, then you should be able to say the exact same thing about the 助動詞 ない
たい and ない aren’t different grammatically no matter how you look at it afaik. The only difference is in the root word itself being 連用形 or 未然形
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Oh my bad, it’s 4am here and I completely glazed over the word you used.
I do not agree here. For starters, you would not use ジュースが飲まない and get that juice is the object. The change of particle here does completely change the sentence not change the nuance. Thus they cannot be treated the same.
They are both considered auxiliary verbs in japanese grammar, yes, but only one of them is conjugated as an i-adjective and thus only one of them works with the change of particle; the change for auxiliary ない that is not an i-adjective has the same issue pointed out in the example above in that it is a completely different sentence, not a change in nuance. ジュースを飲む = I (will) drink juice, but ジュースが飲まない = the juice is/will not drink (although one can say ジュースは飲まない to say “I don’t drink juice”)
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Isn’t that the first point vanilla made?
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Hmm, I might be misreading it? To me they are saying you should be able to treat them all the same just because this nuance exists. That does not track to me. The nuance exists for this が because たい is an i-adjective, not because it is an auxiliary that ends with い
What…? Is your point that you cant say ジュースが飲まない? Because thats the entire point I’m making.
Wait what…aren’t they conjugated in the same exact way?
たい ない
たかった なかった
たく なく
I think we’re getting a little lost here.
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This seems like a good point to go back to spending my time doing more important things lol.
Yeah see my reply to Leebo, I think I just misread what point you were making as the opposite of what you were trying to say.
As for this
It breaks down at the last one. As far as I can tell, なくない for auxiliary ない isn’t a grammatical thing (but it is for i-adjective ない), you need to break it up with は or も to make なくはない or なくもない, or you can use other things.
たくない なくない？
なくなかった
なくなくない…
Yeah, I think you’ve gone too deep. Gonna wind up in limbo before long.
Or the quantum realm, depending on what movie we want to reference.
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From a Japanese grammar perspective, changing the auxiliaries (助動詞) ない・たい to なくない・たくない isn’t the inflection. なく・たく is the inflection (連用形 form) and the subsequent ない is another auxiliary. So in that sense, both of the auxiliaries ない and たい can inflect to なく・たく identically to how true 形容詞 inflect. The question of what subsequent auxiliaries can be grammatically attached (or are actually used in the real world even if grammatical) is separate.
https://www.kokugobunpou.com/助動詞/ない-ぬ-ん/#gsc.tab=0
https://www.kokugobunpou.com/助動詞/たい-たがる/#gsc.tab=0
Of course, this is all so far from OP’s original question, which I also don’t have an explanation for.
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Cool, appreciate the expanded Japanese grammar perspective since I was approaching it from western linguistics (where I suppose there could easily be debate as to what constitutes a conjugation… linguists argue over such definitions so much; I refuse to even try to learn the “language vs pidgin vs creole vs dialect” debate)
Jorden explains this as follows:
“The alternative with o reflects a connection with the verbal part of the predicate, while the ga alternate reflects the adjectival nature of the final -tai portion. We might look on the o-alternative as indicating that what I want to do is buy-a-book; but the ga-alternative focuses on the book as a thing there-is-desire-to-buy. Thus, the choice of o puts focus on an activity, whereas choosing ga emphsizes the nominal of the ga-phrase. In some contexts there may be a decided preference for one over the other.”
Jsl 1, page 178.
This is about as far as I’ve got in this book and there might well be much more info on this, but I would guess が is chosen here to highlight that it is indeed juice we are after, other drinks are not what we seek. を on the other hand would presumably put more emphasis on the drinking portion of the sentence.
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I found a little article from NHK on this which notes among other things that the degree to which を vs が is preferred varies by region, and that the more natural seeming particle also varies depending on whether it’s a simple sentence vs one with an adverb or auxiliary verb involved.
(I don’t think that as a beginner you need to know any of this detail yet; I would run with “it takes が just because that’s how the language happens to be”.)
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I don’t know the answer. What is the textbook? Does it give the answers in the book? I like the look of the book. I really want a textbook for intermediate learners that has a lot of questions and answers and very little grammatical explanation.