I don’t understand why my answer was wrong.
According to ChatGPT, “てある” implies a deliberate action or preparation by someone to achieve a particular state, while “まま” describes a state that continues or remains unchanged without specific intervention. Understanding the context and intention of the speaker is essential for correctly using or interpreting these expressions in Japanese.
Leaving the music on while sleeping sounds like a deliberate action, doesn’t it?
Short answer, てある uses が (or は) and is normally used when something seems deliberately done but the doer is not necessarily clear. Most common example is 書いてある (something is written [by someone, not clear who])
Long answer, someone else can give 笑
Leaving aside the differences between まま and てある, since I’m not capable of explaining them, and whether or not てある fits here, your answer may also be wrong for a different reason. You used つけてある and if anything, probably should use つけてあって here.
While I don’t know exactly why it is wrong to use てある here, apparently it is indeed grammatically incorrect according to this Japanese grammar checker:
My guess would be that まま is used when two actions are performed simultaneously, while with てある one action happens, then the other. That’s just a guess though.
まま has a large focus on the continuality of something (and that’s it), while てある puts its focus on something being put into a continual state for a specific reason/purpose. For example, 音楽をつけてあって寝るのが好きだよ would be like saying ‘I like sleeping having had the music turned on for that purpose (of sleeping)’. Well, that’s a bit of a weird way to put it in English. If you like sleeping with the music on, why the need to add that the music was turned on for the purpose of sleeping? It’s a bit redundant in English, and so is it in Japanese, making it come off as awkward because you’re explaining something you don’t need to. But with まま it’s only concerned about the continuous state, not about any prior action that started that state - simply: I like sleeping with music on.
Hopefully I was able to explain that clear enough, it’s a bit hard to get off the nuanced meaning of てある in the English sentence and why it sounds weird.
