I came across this sentence and couldn’t make sense of the grammar:
「ボアの絵はもう置いときなさい」
I understand it as “no more boa drawings please” with 置いときなさい meaning something like “please leave it be”.
Why isn’t it 置きなさい? Where does とき come from in this sentence?
That とき is the verb 特 (とく), which has several meanings including “to dismiss”, in its ます stem form.
As you may or may not know, it is common in Japanese to combine verbs by using the ます stem of the first verb and then conjugating the second verb normally. In this case, なさい also needs the ます stem of the verb it is attached to, so both verbs ended up being in their ます stem.
You can think of this way of combining verbs as a formal version of the て form, thus this becomes “to leave behind and dismiss”. Obviously that’s more of a literal translation, but you get the idea since you already figured out what was being said.
HTH!
Thank you, I really wasn’t aware that two verbs can be combined outside of specific set phrases.
I was searching for a verb like おきとく, it didn’t occur to me that it’s two separate verbs joined to each other (meaning something like “put it and leave it” probably).
Thanks a lot!
Have you seen this grammar point before? I think it may be this, but using the contracted form + なさい
That’s a different grammar point though.
Yes, I studied this one already, but it didn’t make sense in context.
In this case it’s double 置く, which sounds weird but is seen pretty often, and has been written in a contracted form. So 置いておく —> おいとく —> 置いときなさい
特 is not a verb. 置いとく is a contraction of 置いておく, which is essentially what @nminer linked to.
置く alone can have the meaning of “leaving something”, but that can have various implications, however 置いておく adds additional sense of doing that in advance, as if you know something should be left alone now instead of wasting time with it right now.
とく will always be a contracion of ておく, unless there is some different compound verb that actually uses とく that I cannot think of right now/don’t know.
Edit. Actually it has it’s own entry in jpdb とく – Vocabulary details – jpdb
Check out the explanation and meaning.
Actually, you guys are right. I stand corrected.
The verb I was thinking of was this one 解く, which means to “to untie”, as well as “to dismiss”, but I ended up writing the wrong Kanji. I’ve just never seen that contraction of ておく, with the とく part as とき, so my assumption was that it must be another verb in the ます stem form. However, that seems to be incorrect, so apologies for the confusion.
Ok wow, it’s more complicated than I thought! But even though I’m still trying to wrap my brain around “leaving something in advance”, I think I got the concept now.
Thank you all!
I used to be confused quite a bit by the ‘to do in advance’ translation of ておく, and I finally came to the understanding that it doesn’t always have to take that meaning. It can simply mean to to do something and leave the result of that action in place. So when saying something like ‘置いときなさい’ the person is not only saying “Please leave it behind” but with the addition of ‘ておく’ it’s more like saying “Please leave it, and please have it so it stays in that state (of being left)”
The same could be seen in a sentence such as: 閉じ込めとく ‘To lock up and leave in place’ (lit: to lock up and leave the results of that locking up in place’. Essentially it’s like putting something into a state. You probably know てある - and the implications of てある is that something was put into place by someone or something, and that would be indicated with ておく.
Hopefully that somewhat helps if you’re still a bit confused on how it’s working here!