碎的念

In Kaite kureta, the subject initiating the action is the other person: “He wrote it for me.” In Kaite moratta, “I got him to write it for me,” or “I had him write it for me.” While Inu o aratte kureta is “He washed the dog for me,” Inu o aratte moratta is “I got him to wash the dog for me.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

In one sense, verbs of receiving are simpler than verbs of giving since receiving happens in only one direction. Whereas one set of verbs of giving means “I give to him” and the other set means “He gives to me,” morau means only “I get from him” (as is true, of course, for its humbler equivalent, itadaku, to which all comments on morau apply). There is no form for “He gets from me.” Third-person descriptions of receiving will always mean “He gets from him/her/them,” never “He gets from me.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

When verbs of giving—in either direction—are used as auxiliaries after a -te form, the same person does both the -te verb and the auxiliary, whether I ageru to him or he kureru’s to me: Tegami o kaite kureta. / “He wrote a letter for me (or to me).” Tegami o kaite ageta. / “I wrote a letter for him (or to him).”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

The “I” is in brackets here because it is present in the Japanese sentence only as an unspoken subject. Watashi is not the subject of ikimashita and is not the subject of the sentence. It is simply the topic of the upcoming discussion. The wa tells us only that the following discussion is going to be about watashi as opposed to other possible people. The subject of the verb ikimashita is not watashi but the silent pronoun that follows it.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

Ga marks something that is going to have a piece of grammar—a verb or adjective—connected to it, but wa is far less restrictive: it marks something that is going to have a remark made about it, but it gives absolutely no clue as to what kind of remark it’s going to be. Wa merely says, “Hey, I’m going to tell you about this now, so listen.” Ga says “Watch out for the next verb that comes by: I’m most likely the one that will be doing or being that verb.” Ga always marks the subject of a verb or adjective,6 and if that verb is the main verb, that means ga is marking the subject of the sentence. Wa never does this.

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

It is for this reason that there are often correspondences between wa and ga in Japanese and “the” and “a” in English. “The man” (Otoko wa…) is someone we know about and are now going to get new information on, whereas “a man” is someone new who has just entered the scene (…otoko ga haitte kita). (That is why “the” is called the “definite article”: we know just what we are referring to, while we use “a,” the “indefinite article,” when we’re not so sure.)

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

In his encyclopedic Japanese Language Patterns, Alfonso has noted these correspondences and wisely chosen not to dwell on them. The fact remains, however, that there is a good deal of overlap in linguistic function between Japanese wa and ga and English “the” and “a.”

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

On the matter of unexpressed subjects, Eleanor Jorden’s excellent Japanese: The Spoken Language notes that “A verbal can occur as a complete sentence by itself: there is no grammatical requirement to express a subject.” Lesson 2 contains a strongly worded warning to avoid the overuse of words of personal reference, noting how often Japanese exchanges avoid “overt designation of ‘you’ or ‘I.’

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

harangued

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

the speaker were to pause at the wa, the listener’s brain would whisper subliminally, “Yes, yes, and then what?” After having differentiated the named topic from implied other potential topics, wa dumps its emphatic load on what comes after it. This makes it very different from ga, which emphasizes what comes before it. Have you ever stopped to think about why you were taught never to use wa after interrogative words such as dare, nani, and dore? Because ga puts the emphasis on what immediately precedes it, and when you use those interrogative (question-asking) words, they are precisely what you want to know: “Who went?” “What came out of the cave?” “Which one will kill it most effectively?

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

you would end up with Japanese just as stilted and unnatural as our first version above. (One way that certain Japanese authors—Akutagawa Ryūnosuke comes to mind—give their prose an exotic “foreign” tone is to use more “pronouns” than are strictly necessary.)

《What the Textbooks Don't Tell You》 — Jay Rubin

“沛丰人”与“丰人”区别不大，但卢绾以“丰人”与刘邦同里，且同日出生，里中人相贺，说明其与刘邦出生地均同为“中阳里”，而萧何无“同里”词句，也没有和刘邦幼年交往的记载，极大的可能是，他为“邑人”，而非“里人”。通俗地说，尽管都在一个“丰邑”的地理范围内，刘邦、卢绾是“城镇户口”，萧何却是“农村户口”。

《汉瓦：西汉王朝洪业启示录》 — 刘三解