～した～ - Grammar Discussion

Grammar Points
#11

I am confusing this grammar point with another one, namely 「ている」. Or rather not the grammar point itself, but these two example sentences:

お寿司を食べている男の人は、私の兄です。
The man who is eating sushi is my older brother.

映画を見ている女の人は、田中さんのお母さんだろう。
The woman who is watching the movie is Tanaka-san’s mother, right?

I had some trouble with these sentences before, but by now I understand them.

Now that I’m seeing this new grammar point, I wonder if this isn’t grammatically just the same thing (or an extension of it). Also note the following sentence from this grammar point:

日本に住んでいる外国人。
A foreigner living in Japan.

I don’t see anything new in that. It’s just Te-form + いる modifying the succeeding noun. So let me suggest, shouldn’t the above sentences from the other grammar point be moved to this one?

#12

Hello everyone,
I am stuck a little bit, would someone please me explain what difference between:
ナイフで刺されました男性 and ナイフで刺した男性 ? I mean, can I use
Verb[ た] + Noun construction to build up sentences with passive verbs ? Thanks :slight_smile:

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#13

@desufikator Welcome to the community!

You most certainly can! However, when you conjugate these verbs they must be in the plain form; you cannot use the ます-form to modify a noun.

ナイフで刺された男性
“A man stabbed by a knife.” (The man was the one who was stabbed)

ナイフで刺した男性
“A man who stabbed with a knife.” (The man was the one doing the stabbing)

I hope this helps! Cheers.

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#14

Thanks for this explanation! It really helped me to understand this.

One thing I don’t quite get is how the congugation (if that’s the right word) works. Presumably, with -ru verbs, you just replace る with た, ている, or ていた (as with 食べている in the example). But then why is it 太っている rather than just 太ている? And how does it work with u-verbs?

Cheers!

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#15

Iceni, you probably know the answer to your question by now, but in case newcomers have the same question:

IIUC, 太るis a godan (five-step conjugation) verb. For godan verbs, て form conjugation becomes って (e.g., 太って) when the verb ending is う, つ, or る.

食べる, by comparison, is an ichidan (one-step conjugation) verb, where the stem is used followed by て (e.g., 食べて) as you’ve written.

You can see that grammar point here.

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#16

I’m very confused about this one because I saw nouns being modified by verbs in forms other than Verb[ている] and Verb[た].
Here is an example from Tae Kim’s guide:
赤いズボンを買う友達はボブだ。Friend who buy red pants is Bob.
Here you see verb 買う in an infinitive form and it modified a noun.
How can this be explained?

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#17

The explanation is very simple but probably not very satisfying. Nouns can be modified by a lot of random Japanese, but this grammar point is not trying to explain relative clauses in general. It’s only showing a specific type of relative clause because we can’t learn everything in one go anyway.

As for why it’s only focusing on these two, I can only guess, since the grammar point itself doesn’t explain a whole lot and the examples aren’t even full sentences. But my guess would be that it’s because these two forms can express a state rather than just actions in the past (-た) or actions in progress (-ている). The “friend who buy pants” sentence doesn’t fit that scheme.

To elaborate, while -ている expressing an ongoing state becomes a pretty big topic at some point in most textbooks, the same cannot be said about -た expressing a resulting state. I guess there’s usually a way to fudge things so that the past interpretation works in main clauses, but if you think about it, 疲れた for example usually doesn’t just mean “I got tired at some point in the past”, but rather “I am tired now”.

In relative clauses this is more common. For example, a 借りたもの isn’t only a thing I borrowed in the past. It could also just be things I borrow in general (with the -た form expressing the resulting state of me borrowing them). 借りたものは必ず返します “I always return what I borrow” is not describing things I borrowed in the past. It’s describing things that are in a state of being borrowed, regardless of when I borrow them.

At least that’s what I think would be useful to learn from this kind of grammar point, regardless of what else we can do with relative clauses.

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#18

Thank you very much for detailed response! You may be right about intentions behind this grammar point. However this is the only grammar point about Modified Nouns and Relative Clauses on this site. I can imagine it can do harm to people who see this grammar point and think that this is the only way to do relative clauses, I almost fell into this trap. If I didn’t read Tae Kim’s guide before going through Bunpro I would very well think about this grammar in a wrong way. I think mods should correct this grammar point to make it more clear what they intended it to be.

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#19

I am a bit confused here. Last week I was going over みんなの日本語 chapter 22. My teacher taught me this lesson and we learned it where any dictionary form verb clause can modify a noun. I also followed up on Tae Kim and it also seems to support verb clauses can be in plain dictionary form to modify a noun. Tae Kim DOES make a distinction that noun clauses need to be in [ta] form or past tense form to modify a noun.

Am I not understanding something here or should this maybe be split into two grammar points? A noun modified clause in [ta] or past tense form and then a verb modified noun in dictionary form?

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#20

I agree that the grammar point should be modified, whether through splitting it or something else. I believe many learners are confused by this as well.

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#21

I got this sentence それは、あの店が売ったお弁当でしょ but ended up typing in 売ったことがある instead (which is wrong). Now, I started to wonder if that would’ve been acceptable. I actually asked ChatGPT about this but I’m not entirely sure if I can trust its answer:

  1. それは、あの店が売ったお弁当でしょう: This sentence means, “That must be the bento that the store sold.” It’s indicating that the specific bento you’re referring to was sold by that store.
  2. それは、あの店が売ったことがあるお弁当でしょう: This sentence translates to, “That must be the bento that the store has sold before.” By adding “ことがある”, you’re implying that the store has experience of selling that kind of bento in the past. It does not necessarily mean the specific bento you’re referring to was sold at that store.

While the first sentence refers to a specific instance of sale, the second sentence refers to a recurring or past event, that the store has experience of selling that type of bento. So, while they are similar, the nuanced difference lies in whether you’re talking about a specific instance (first sentence) or a general past occurrence (second sentence).

Is ChatGPT right about the “this particular sale” vs. “more general” nuance?

#22

I’ve been struggling to differentiate between this grammar point and the の-verb nominalizer grammar point. For example, is there a nuanced difference between these two sentences?

掃除をした人。
掃除をしたの[は/が]人。

#23
  1. The person that cleaned
  2. The one that cleaned is person
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#24

I don’t really understand this grammar point and I feel like there is information missing. Why does 住む become 住んでいる? Specifically, where does the ん come from?

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#25

Hi!

住む becomes 住んでいる because it is in its ている form, as 住む is one of those verbs that require the ている form to make real sense (you dwell and continue in the state of dwelling in a certain place).

The ん comes from the way a む ending verb takes its て form.

Click on the hyperlinks to learn more on these grammar points.

HTH!

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#26

Thank you for the explanation!

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#27

「たかしさんは東京に住んだ男」
This sentence shouldn’t it be「たかしさんは東京に住んでいた男」to say he lived in the past or 「たかしさんは東京に住んでいる男」to say he continues living there?

I don’t understand why the 「ている」form is used like 「住んだ」, and then the rest of sentences just used 「ている」 or basic 「た」forms.

#28

So the first example sentence they give is

たかしさんは東京に住んだ男

    • How come there’s an ん between the 住 and だ?
    • The page is all about the “た + Nouns” so why is it a だ instead of た?
#29

Hi!

This grammar point may give you the reason for both. Bear in mind that the verb is 住む.

HTH!

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#30

It says “Verb［た］+ Noun” but what it actually means is the た-form of the verb + noun.
For Godan verbs, this is how you conjugate them into their た-form:

Verb Ending た-form
う, つ, る → った
む, ぶ, ぬ → んだ
く → いた
ぐ → いだ
す → した

So basically, you replace the verb ending with the the た-form.

In the sentence たかしさんは東京に住んだ男, the verb is 住む and since it ends with む, you replace it with んだ, so it becomes 住んだ.

I recommend putting this Hatsune Miku song on loop to quickly learn these rules: 【Hatsune Miku】Nihongo Te-form song Genki U-verb & irregular verbs. Keep in mind, the song is for て-form. For た-form, you would just replace all the て and で with た and だ, like the table I made. Also, this rule only applies to Godan verbs. I recommend looking up the difference between Godan and Ichidan verbs.

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