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面白い事件が起こりました。- This translates to "An interesting incident occurred" instead of "I caused an interesting incident" is because of the indicative form of 起こ which indicates an event rather than a causative action.

窓側の席のほうがいいですが。- This sentence has me beat, "I prefer a window seat"? "ほうがいい" indicate preference? What's the "が" at the end supposed to indicate.

石鹼はそこに置いてあります。- "The soap is placed there", I'm confused, I thought the imperative form of 置く indicates it's a causative action, but it's not?

Emu_Flock
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  • For ほうがいい, see for example https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/35974. 置いて isn't an imperative form (per ordinary Western understandings of grammar, at least), it's a connective form which can be used imperatively (more commonly than the actual imperative, in normal life). See for example https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/30564/ and https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/47444/. – Karl Knechtel Jan 04 '22 at 23:53

1 Answers1

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In future please only ask one question per post.

面白い事件が起こりました
An interesting incident occurred.

The verb here is 起こる, which is an intransitive verb meaning "something happened". If you want to say that you caused the incident you need the transitive version of the verb which is 起こす. Your sentence would then be 面白い事件を起こしました (I caused an interesting incident). Note the change from が to を.

窓側の席のほうがいいですが
I would prefer a window seat

The が at the end literally means 'but'. The rest of the sentence is left unsaid. You can fill in the missing part in your head with " but I don't want to be a bother" or anything like that. This is a very common way to make a request in Japanese. It makes the request less direct and therefore more polite. I feel sure this has been discussed a lot on this site but this is the only link I could find.

石鹼はそこに置いてあります
The soap is there.

There is no imperative form in this sentence. This is the て form of the verb with the auxiliary ある. The てある grammar point is discussed in this link.

user3856370
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