とき - Grammar Discussion

Grammar Points
#1

when
at the time

Structure

  • Verb + とき ・ Verb[た] + とき
  • Noun + の + とき ・ Noun + だった + とき
  • なAdj + な + とき ・なAdj + だった + とき
  • いAdj + とき ・いAdj + いかった + とき

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#2

Can you add a note to address the difference between AたときB (A happens before B) and A(dictionary form)ときB (A happens after B)

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#3

Got this sentence in my reviews today:

あの映画を見たとき、泣いた。

Could ら (i.e. 見たら) work here as well? There’s no alternative right answers listed for this sentence so I’m not sure.

#4

No, 見た is the past tense of 見る (see)
見たら means ‘if you see’ or ‘when you see’

EDIT: Sorry, I made a mistake. If you were to replace 見たとき with 見たら, than yes that’s fine.

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#5

Thank you for the quick response!

(Sorry, I should have clarified - the gloss given was “When I watched that movie, I cried” yeah)

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#6

When is using に needed and when should you not use it? I dont see a pattern in here, and though it’s used in some of the examples, nothing seems to guide us on when it’s used.

It’d be appreciated if that could be clarified and added.

#7

Simply put,「に」in this situation is just used to emphasize「時」.

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#8

狭い駐車場で車のドアを開けたときにドアを壁にぶつけた。
When I opened my car door in a small parking lot, I slammed it on the wall. (Individual event)

This example sentence from the grammar point uses とき for an individual event and is marked as such. The rest of the grammar point explains that:

"[…] What this means is that it will not be used to discuss very specific events. For example ‘the time you tripped over a log and hurt your foot’. "

So why is とき used here anyway? Feels like a strange example to me.

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#9

Yes I asked myself the same question, it does say that とき is used for broad periods and not specific events :confused:

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#10

Exactly my thoughts. The introduction/first example says it can be used for individual events but the Caution box says the opposite. Completely contradictory.

Would be nice if we could get that point about に added to the page as well.

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#11

Here to add onto the folks who are confused by the fact that the first example sentence is seemingly completely contradictory to the information given in the Caution section. Spent a fair amount of time scouring the first example and Caution section examples to work out what the difference was, but couldn’t work out what it would be.

#12

Here’s my understanding:

The Caution box says “it will not be used to highlight ongoing states that were true during the first action” and the given example is At the time of A, it was Tuesday which is invalid because Tuesday is an ongoing state (24 hours of it). I think that’s the key. The first example sentence is just an Individual Event, of the form At the time of A, B. where B is discrete rather than continuous.