| pomax | This particle is a nicely complex one. The grand unifying role that
it plays is, actually, unification, but the way in which it does it is
usually experienced as doing completely different things. We already saw
と being used to create an exhaustive noun list
in chapter 2 in the section on noun particles, but this role extends
not just to things, but to people as well. In the same way that
[X]と[Y]と[Z] is an exhaustive noun list (i.e., the unity of all these
things), if we use people instead of Xs and Ys, we end up with a unified
group:
本田ほんださんと榊さかきさんが映画えいがを見みに行いく。
"Honda and Sakaki are going to go see a film."
In this sentence, the "noun list" 本田さんと榊さん exhaustively lists all the members of the group of people that will go see a film.An interesting feature is that と can unify a group of people,
or a group of things in general, leaving the central, contextually
obvious noun implied. For instance, examine the following sentence:
木村きむらさんと東京とうきょうに行いきました。
In this sentence, 東京に行きました means "(I, you, he, she, it, we,
they) went to Tokyo", and 木村さんと looks like an incomplete noun list.
However, this is one of those aspects of Japanese where context is
important: we can leave off a contextually obvious "thing" in a noun
list, and expect people who understand Japanese to fill this in
themselves: in this case, the most obvious interpretation is that 'I' or
'we' went to Tokyo with Kimura. However, just because it is the most
obvious, that does not mean it's the only interpretation possible. If,
say, we're discussing what a mutual friend of ours has been doing over
the holiday, without that friend present, and one of us utters the
phrase 木村さんと東京に行きました then the contextually omitted person would be our
mutual friend, rather than either of us.There are several ways to make the omitted 'thing' explicit. One of these is to use the disambiguation particle, は:
石田いしださんは木村さんと東京に行きました。
"Ishida (rather than someone else) went to Tokyo with Kimura."
However, this only makes sense if the sentence would otherwise
be ambiguous. If instead we only want to reiterate the person's
identity, we would use が:
石田さんが木村さんと東京に行きました。
"Ishida went to Tokyo with Kimura."
In this sentence, 石田 has been explicitly mentioned as primary
verb actor, and because he's already been mentioned, can be left implied
in the と listing that follows.Finally, we can do the most unnatural thing possible, and form a 'proper' exhaustive list without any implied nouns or people:
石田さんと木村さんが東京に行きました。
"Ishida and Kimura went to Tokyo."
I say unnatural, because if someone has already been
established as contextual subject or actor, you either leave them
implied, or you mention them as actual subject or actor. If this was an
opening sentence in a conversation, however, this sentence would be
fine, as no context will have been established yet.Being
able to tell whether a noun listing has any implied items is rather
simple: if it ends on と, instead of on a noun, it has an implied item.
It doesn't matter how long the noun list is for this; if it ends on と,
something has been left off:
石田さんと木村さんが東京に行きました。
"Ishida and Kimura went to Tokyo."
石田さんと木村さんと東京に行きました。
"Ishida, Kimura and (I, you, he, she, it, us, they) went to Tokyo."
Of course this explanation so far has focussed on people, but the same goes for plain old object nouns:
カードと買かった。
"(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) bought (it) with (a) credit card."
So it doesn't really matter what category the nouns are; as
long as you're using と for exhaustive listing, a full list is always of
the form:
[X]と[Y](と[Z]と[...])
And a list with an implied item is always of the form:
[X]と([Y]と[...]と)
With this list explicitly ending on と. However, make sure to add direct object particles when using 他動詞たどうし verbs (or rather, when using verbs in a 他動詞 role, taking direct objects):
オレンジと買った。
"(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) bought (it) with oranges."
This sentence is not incorrect, but it says that we bought
something in a place where oranges are considered a currency. This is
probably not what we meant to say, and instead we wanted to say this:
オレンジとを買った。
"(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) bought (it) along with (the) oranges."
Note the を in this sentence, which leads to a normal phrase
"(something)を買った", where the "(something)" is our list with implicit
items.There are more things that と can do, and some of
these involve a [noun]と construction, so try to remember that just
because an exhaustive listing with an implied item has the form [X]と,
not everything that fits the pattern [X]と has to be such an exhaustive
listing with implied item. In fact, looking at further roles of と this
becomes immediately obvious.In addition to noun listing, と can be used in combination with sound or state words, properly called 擬音語ぎおんご, onomatopoeia, and 擬態語ぎたいご, mimeses respectively, to form adverbial constructions.
For instance, if it was a starlit night and we wanted to say that all
the lights were causing the lake to sparkle, we would say something like
the following:
池いけがきらきらとした。
"The lake sparkled."
In this sentence, the word きらきら is a state description word
(called 'mimesis' in English), which paired with と becomes an adverb to
the verb する. Literally, then, this construction would say that the lake
is 'doing' きらきら. Sound description words (called 'onomatopoeia' in
English) are treated in the same way:
雨あめがザーと降ふってきた。
"The rain came pouring down."
Here, the onomatopoeic word ザー is not found in the translation,
because in English — as in most Western languages — we do not use such
words to any serious degree. In Japanese, however, these words are an
essential part of natural sounding language: the translation states that
rain came "pouring down", because ザー is the sound that rain pouring
down makes. Before you now go thinking up all kinds of onomatopoeia
yourself, Japanese has been in use for centuries, and virtually any
onomatopoeia you might come up with already exists, in a very specific
form. There are in fact 擬音語・擬態語 dictionaries which will list all of them
by category and meaning (you may find one online on
www.nihongoresources.com, for instance), so you're not free to come up
with your own; there are several hundred well established onomatopoeia
and mimeses, each typically with at least a handful of interpretations
depending on what they relate to, leading to well over a thousand
different uses. It is not surprise, then, that a mastery of onomatopoeia
and mimeses is typically seen as having mastered conversational
Japanese.In fact, this adverbial marking of things using と
extends beyond just the 擬音語 and 擬態語, and through this extending becomes
a bit more complex too: a popular way to explain this is to call と the quoting particle, and give an example such as the following to illustrate this:
「今いま行いく」と言いいました。
"(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) said (I, you, he, she, it, we, they)'ll be coming over right now."
This clearly demonstrates a quote being recited, but things are
not quite that simple; と will work with a much wider variety of things
than just quotes, as the following examples should illustrate:
車くるまを買かおうと思おもいます。
"(I, you, he, she, it, we, they)'re thinking about buying a car."
弱点じゃくてんを力ちからと考かんがえましょう。
"Let's think of (my, your, his, her, its, our,
their) weakness(es) as (one of my, your, his, her, its, our, their)
strength(s) (instead)."
趣味しゅみは仕事しごととしています。
"(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) consider (my,
your, his, her, its, our, their) hobby (my, your, his, her, its, our,
their) work."
What と is actually doing is marking all these things — the quote 「今行く」, the volitional
act 車を買おう, the concept 力, and the activity 仕事 — as somehow being
adverbial to the verbs in question; 言う, 思う, 考える, and する. The actual
interpretation of what と is doing depends entirely on the interpretation
of what's being marked as adverbial, and the interpretation of the
verbs used. For instance, 言う means 'to say', but it can also mean 'to
call'. As such, we can actually translate our first sentence in two
radically different ways:
「今行く」と言いました。
"He said he'd be right over."
"He was called Imaiku."
The second translation sounds quite unlikely, but if we replace 今行く with 谷村さん, we get exactly the same possible translations:
「谷村たにむらさん」と言いました。
"He said 'Tanimurasan'."
"He was called Tanimura."
Suddenly the first translation sounds quite unlikely, although nothing really changed.So how does と differ from を,
the direct object marker? Actually, sometimes we can use either, but
for some verbs the meaning changes radically when we use と, as opposed
to when we use を. A good example of this is the verb なる, which we looked
at in chapter 2, in the section on important verbs. This verb changes
its meaning from "to become" to "to be" when we use と rather than を, so
there is an important choice to be made about which particle suits our
need best. Another example is the verb 考える, which means "to think" when
used with を, but "to think about" when used with と.Hopefully
you spotted what happens here: rather than the verb and the direct
object being distinct things, using と unifies the verb and thing it
works with into something that means something different from the sum of
the parts. For instance, you cannot split up "to be [X]" into "to be"
and "X" without changing the meaning of the verb. The same goes for "to
think about [X]", or "to consider [X] something", or "to dream about
[X]". While it is easier to explain と as a series of separate things for
all these different verbs, it's really doing the exact same thing for
all of them, even though there is no simple rule in Western grammar that
we can map it to so that it makes sense given what we know from our own
every day language use.To make matters even worse, we're not there yet. One more thing that と does is act as a logical consequence. We already saw か acting as logical 'or', and と is basically the logical 'and' equivalent. If we want to express that two things are simultaneously the case, we would use と:
飛行機ひこうきは遅おくれると乗のれません。
"With aeroplanes, the idea is that if you're late, you can't board."
literally: "for aeroplanes (rather than something else): if you're late, you can't board."
It is easy to mistake what happens in this sentence for just an "if A, then B",
so let's look at what this sentence is doing before illustrating this
use of と with a more drastic example. Aeroplanes, with their strict
schedules, have a very simple rule, being that if you are late for the
flight, then too bad for you. The plane doesn't wait for people. As
such, "being late" and "not being allowed on the plane" are
simultaneously true. The moment you are late, immediately and
irrevocably you are also unable to board. We can make this more obvious
with the promised more drastic example:
友達ともだちが首くびになると辞職じしょくします。
"If my friend gets fired, I quit."
Here, it is crucially important to notice the と, and realise that we're talking about simultaneous actions.
This sentence does not say "if my friend gets fired, I shall put in my
resignation", it says that right there and then, the moment he gets
fired, you're quitting. It also doesn't leave any ambiguity, because
you're asserting a fact. Since と is acting as a logical 'and',
statements involving と don't concern opinion, hearsay, or guesswork,
they state plain and simple true fact, so the following is correct use of と:
雨あめが降ふる。今いま行いけば傘かさがないと濡ぬれる。
"It's raining at the moment. If you go out now, you'll get wet without an umbrella."
But this next sentence is simply wrong:
雨が降ふるとぬれる。
"If it rains, we'll get wet."
The reason this second sentence is wrong is because と expresses
a universally true fact. However, if you have an umbrella, or you're
indoors, or you might be in any one of a number of situations in which
it is raining but you don't get wet, this sentence is simply false, and
as such stating it as a universal fact is plain wrong. Usually students
will mistakenly use と in this way when what they really want to say is
something pertaining to a particular, specific situation. For instance,
if you're looking out the window, and you know you have no umbrella with
you, you might want to say "if it starts raining now, I'll get wet",
with the implication that this will happen if you go outside, not that
you'll magically get wet inside if it starts to rain outside. Instead of
using と, these kind of musings require the use of ば or たら conditionals:
たら: 雨が降ったらきっとぬれます、ねえ。
ば: 雨が降れば、ぬれる、なあ。
"I guess if it starts raining I'll get wet"
with the なあ/ねえ endings signalling that you're saying something
rhetorical, but you'd like whoever is listening to acknowledge you
anyway.This factual consequence is also found in unfinished sentences such as the following:
今いま行いかないと。
literally: "Not leaving now (means...)"
meaning: "(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) have to go."
そうしないと。
literally: "Not doing so (means ...)"
meaning: "(I, you, he, she, it, we, they) have to do so."
These sentences are unfinished in the sense that they omit the —
contextually obvious — generally negative consequences of the "not
doing" of something. |
Just like て, the 連用形 of たり is used, and just like for て and た,
contractions occur when used with 五段 verbs (with 行く having an irregular
contraction, and 問う, 訪う, 乞う and 請う inflecting via their 連体形 rather than
連用形). However, unlike the て form, which can pair up with any 'final
verb' for its inflection, たり gets its inflection specifically from the
verb する, meaning "to do":
今日きょうは学校がっこうに行いったり、授業じゅぎょうに出でたり、ご飯はんを食たべたりしました。
"Today (I) went to school, went to class and ate."
This sentence literally reads "Today I did: going to school,
going to class, eating", without any distinction in which action
occurred when, in relation to other actions; we're literally only
summarising activities performed.Verbs in たり form can also
be used on their own in a sentence, in which case it translates to
"doing things such as", and still get closed off by する:
昨日きのう、本ほんを読よんだりした。
"Yesterday (I) did things like reading a book."
The negative たり form is constructed by placing a verb in plain
negative form first (未然形 + ない) and then turning this verbal negative
into a たり form by the same formula: 連用形+たり (with a contraction just as
for past tense), forming 未然形 + なかったり.
