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In my JLPT practise book, the following exchange between a man and a woman is part of a longer exchange in a listening section:

女{おんな}：先日{せんじつ}は町内{ちょうない}集会{しゅうかい}、お疲{つか}れさまでした。

男{おとこ}：お疲{つか}れさま。次{つぎ}の役員{やくいん}が決{き}まらなくて、随分{ずいぶん}長{なが}くかかりましたね。

So, the woman first thanks the man for his efforts at the previous meeting. Then, if I understand correctly, the guy says that if they don't decide the staff for the next one, then it will have gone on long. The tenses don't add up.

I'm confused because he says 次{つぎ}, as if he's talking about the next meeting, but the sentence ends with the past tense, as if he was talking about a previous meeting.

Is the man talking about the next or previous meeting? And what exactly is he saying about it?

Kaji
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  • I tried to put together a speculative idea of what it could be for a commented answer, and I'm still having a bit of trouble. Screw it, this one's weird. – Kaji May 28 '14 at 03:48
  • Or rather at which they were failing to decide who will be the next 役員 and this made it take a lot of time. – virmaior May 28 '14 at 04:02

1 Answers1

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There are a couple issues here.

First off, the 次 here is about the next 役員 or board / committee member, not about the next meeting.

次の役員が決まらなくて
the next board member(s) が not decided
随分長く掛かりました
it [the meeting] took a really long time

So basically, the man is saying that the last meeting (that the woman mentions) took a really long time, because the meeting couldn't / didn't come to a decision about the next member(s).

There is no mention of the next meeting.

Secondly, Japanese doesn't really have grammatical tense in the same way that English does. (This part is more tangential to your question, so if your eyes glaze over reading this, no worries. :) ) Strictly speaking, grammatical tense is where verbs conjugate depending on the completedness of the action in relation to now. What Japanese has is more specifically grammatical aspect, where verbs conjugate depending on the completedness of the action in relation to the timeframe of the current context. (Read the Aspect vs. tense section for a comparison of the two.)

As such, it's grammatically possible to say things in Japanese like 昨日起きるところで "yesterday just before I wake up" (the context is yesterday, and the speaker, at the point being described, has not yet woken), or 明日あの本を読みきれた後で "tomorrow after I finished reading that book" (the context is tomorrow, and the speaker, at the point being described, will have finished reading). English doesn't work this way, so just translating word-for-word might get you confused. It took me a while to wrap my head around this difference.

Eiríkr Útlendi
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    Yes, but I think you can argue that the context is set by the matrix verb. In that sense, the conjugation on the matrix verb is a real tense, not an aspect. E.g. *昨日起きる。 is ungrammatical even if the waking up is taking place in the context of yesterday. It has to be 昨日起きた。, i.e. it is 起きた setting the context, not 昨日. I fully agree with you for non-matrix verbs. – dainichi May 28 '14 at 05:58
  • I don't have any good examples right to hand, but I recall years ago reading a novel and being puzzled by all these "present tense" verb sentences being used in a paragraph describing something in the past, and not in a dialogue or other context where that might be normal in English. My Japanese tutor at the time explained about aspect and how the overall context would decide the correct verb forms with respect to る vs. た. – Eiríkr Útlendi May 28 '14 at 06:38
  • Were those somehow qualitatively different from "historical present"/史的現在 which exists in e.g. English as well? – dainichi May 28 '14 at 10:03
  • Historical present -- interesting possibility. It's been a long time and I don't remember the details, but I do recall being puzzled enough by the use of the imperfective (-u) to think now that whatever I saw then, it wasn't anything that had a clear analog in English. 2) Grammatical aspect I think covers the 昨日 起きるところで, in that a) it is indeed grammar that demands this use of the imperfective, and b) while the overall temporal context of the utterance would be set by the matrix verb, as you note, within the limited scope of the ところ phrase, the context is before the speaker wakes.
    • – Eiríkr Útlendi May 28 '14 at 17:06
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi can there be a relation between this and "te+iru expressing past events(states)"??? – raruna Jul 30 '20 at 19:59
  • @raruna, unclear what you mean. Any examples? – Eiríkr Útlendi Jul 30 '20 at 20:38
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi もう死んでいる=already have died expresses a past event instead of a "present progressive or even present". Does this have anything to do with the 'grammatical aspect' you mentioned? – raruna Jul 30 '20 at 22:00
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    @raruna, yes, this touches on aspect -- for 死ぬ, specifically, the verb has an aspect of instantaneous action, contrasting with English to die, which denotes more of a process. In English, I can say someone "is dying", to mean that they are in the process of becoming not-alive. In Japanese, 死んでいる means that they are いる-ing (being) in the state resulting from the completion of the instantaneous action of the verb 死ぬ (die) -- i.e. they "are dead". This construction holds true for all Japanese instantaneous-action verbs: the ～ている form usually indicates result, not ongoing action. – Eiríkr Útlendi Jul 31 '20 at 21:07
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    @raruna, see also this question and answer thread which discusses a different verb with the same kind of instantaneous aspect. In my own answer posted in that thread, I describe it as a "change of state" verb. I hope that helps. – Eiríkr Útlendi Jul 31 '20 at 21:14
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi Speaking of grammatical aspect, how to learn to create sentences with grammatical aspect 'nuances' rather than admire ready sentences' nuances? For example in 遅く寝るより、早く寝た方がいいですよ。,saying [遅く寝るより、早く寝る方がいいですよ。] would be enough(i think), but I feel the aspect nuance, added here, is something like:'every time you go late to bed, in that time if you went early to bed it would be better'(Correct me if i'm wrong). What is the rule to make my own sentences and add aspect nuance like in this example? – raruna Aug 01 '20 at 00:25
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    @raruna, "learn the language more fully" is really all that comes to mind. I'm not trying to be snide or mean -- your question touches the heart of learning any language, that you need to get inside of it and become familiar with the nuances in order to use it effectively. There is no "rule" for adding nuance, you just get there over time by reading, listening, speaking, writing, and getting feedback. As I believe you're now discovering, understanding individual words is not enough. Ideally, go live in Japan for a while, really immerse yourself. (Once COVID is done, of course. 😄) Good luck! – Eiríkr Útlendi Aug 01 '20 at 00:29
  • @Eiríkr Útlendi In 明日あの本を読みきれた後で(the sentence you gave as example) are 明日 and 読みきれた included in the same clause or is 明日 in the clause after 後で?? – raruna Aug 10 '20 at 18:11
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi Regarding your suggestion in the answer,I wonder what is the relation between 'perfective-imperfective form' concept and 'aspect' concept:
    1. Is it that if one of them is considered, the other must be neglected?
    2. Or can the two concepts be considered at the same time to treat japanese verbs? If that's the case, what's the difference between the two?
     – raruna Aug 11 '20 at 23:37