食べさせられられる?

[charizardpal]

Hi I'm a student of Japanese and I had a quick question--is it grammatical to conjugate taberu (to eat) as "食べさせられられた?" (Tabe-sase-rare-rareta?) Would that mean, '(someone or something) made him able to eat?'

ほんとうにありがとう

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by charizardpal

Hi I'm a student of Japanese and I had a quick question--is it grammatical to conjugate taberu (to eat) as "食べさせられられた?" (Tabe-sase-rare-rareta?) Would that mean, '(someone or something) made him able to eat?'

ほんとうにありがとう

Google shows only four occurrences of that phrase on the entire Internet. One is this thread, one is a page saying "I've never heard of 食べさせられられた," one says something like "学生時代ウンコを食べさせられられた" (I was allowed/forced to be able to eat shit in my student years), and I didn't bother looking at the fourth.

I'm going to say: no.

After all, "make him able to eat" is just an inartful way of "permit him to eat," which would just be 食べさせる.

Google: "食べさせられられた" - Google Search

It's amazing that people never realize "I wonder if this word exists. I should do a Google search to see if people are using it!"

I did come across an interesting paper: Powered by Google Docs

“Morpheme Insertions in Japanese Causative and Potential Expressions”

It's just an observation about how there are a number of instances on the Internet of people doing stuff like たべさせサセる and 使えレる. Basically, adding extra morphemes that need not be there (and technically are incorrect, but people do it for a variety of reasons that aren't always just typos).

Morpheme reduplications have not been acceptable in Japanese even in cases of double
causative constructions (“A had B make C do ~”), where only one causative morpheme
appears on the surface. However, recent data obtained from the internet show that not only do
partial reduplications of the causative morpheme appear frequently (to form -(s)aS-As(e)-),
but complete reduplications as well (to form -(s)ase-sas(e)-). A similar pattern is observed for
the potential morphemes as well.

What seems to have begun as an attempt to intensify the meaning of the relevant morpheme
(causatives and potentials) after a process of reduction and reanalysis, also appears to be
developing into a means to strengthen the relevant morpheme.

Some sample text analysis is sourced from SMAP, of all things.

[chryuop]

charizardpal, I might be wrong, but I think ありがとう is used after a favor is done and not before. I don't think ありがとう and お願いします can be freely switched around.


Kyle, watch out with that Google statistics. When first I came here to Japan forum I had a piece of Japanese grammar that I didn't know if it was right. A japanese had told me it was correct, another native speaker had told me not and google returned thousands found matches. Then here MMM and Nagoyankee confirmed it was an error (not saying anything for this OP case coz the number returned from your search is pretty conclusive ).

[duo797]

Originally Posted by chryuop

charizardpal, I might be wrong, but I think ありがとう is used after a favor is done and not before. I don't think ありがとう and お願いします can be freely switched around.

This is correct. If I asked someone a question, I would say おねがいします and after my question was answered I would say ありがとうございます.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by chryuop

charizardpal, I might be wrong, but I think ありがとう is used after a favor is done and not before. I don't think ありがとう and お願いします can be freely switched around.


Kyle, watch out with that Google statistics. When first I came here to Japan forum I had a piece of Japanese grammar that I didn't know if it was right. A japanese had told me it was correct, another native speaker had told me not and google returned thousands found matches. Then here MMM and Nagoyankee confirmed it was an error (not saying anything for this OP case coz the number returned from your search is pretty conclusive ).

Oh definitely. But when there are only four? I mean, when there are thousands, it's possible that there are people making mistakes. But the absence of results indicates either (1) everyone on the planet is making the same mistake, or (2) it is not a mistake.

What's weird is that I just ran the search again, and there are 7 results, 2 are from JF, and five are new. The other three I saw earlier are missing now!

[Nagoyankee]

Originally Posted by charizardpal

Hi I'm a student of Japanese and I had a quick question--is it grammatical to conjugate taberu (to eat) as "食べさせられられた?" (Tabe-sase-rare-rareta?) Would that mean, '(someone or something) made him able to eat?'

No, that is not a grammatical sentence. It's called a tongue twister!

You will never see a られられる or られられた in correctly written Japanese for as long as you live.

食べさせられた is the correct form and it can mean two very different things.

1. I was able to make (someone) eat (something) that he hates to eat.
or, I was able to make (someone sick and with no appetite) eat a decent size meal.

2. I was able to bring home the bread. (I had a steady income.)