Quote:
Originally Posted by NinjaCrab
I have a question regarding the difference between ために and に in ~てくれる/~てあげる sentences.
In Genki II, it says in a footnote that "If the main verb does not have a place for the person, use ために. 掃除する is one such verb". けんさんが私のために部屋を掃除してくれました。
However, In my grammar dictionary it says that you only use ために with intransitive verbs. They provide the following example:
みんなは私のために働いてくれた。
This confuses me since 掃除する acts as a transitive verb in the above example. Would it be wrong to say:
けんさんが私に部屋を掃除してくれました。?
Thanks in advance.
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There seem to be a crapload of examples violating what your book says:
“のために てあげ”の検索結果（10 件）：英辞郎 on the WEB：スペースアルク
Just look how many transitive examples there are there!
Additionally,
http://nihon5ch.net/contents/ch5/kosatsu/15.html indicates you can use ために with transitive giving constructions, too. I'm having trouble understanding the grammatical discussion because the diagrams are not done the way Americans draw diagrams, so they're culturally foreign to me. I vaguely remember how they work from when I lived in Japan, but not quite. It looks like the Japanese is suggesting that when A does something, and it confers a benefit upon Z, but the direct beneficiary was someone else, Zのために is useful. I think this means that, for example,
John gave Mark the book for me = 私のためにジョンがマークに本をあげた。
Mark was the receiver, but I was also a beneficiary of the action.
What you might find interesting is this link:
Japanese - Google Books
It's a linguistic discussion of the structure, and it considers it perfectly acceptable to use のために with transitive verbs, too.
I'm not really sure about this, but my sense is that they're fairly interchangeable in many cases. I've never really confronted this problem, and I'm kind of upset I can't find a good solution via Google. That's a rare occurrence these days.
I'm only offering this attempt at an answer because (1) it forced me to try and learn something new; and (2) the board has been (understandably) slow the past few days regarding native speaker activity.