Hey guys,
I don´t understand how だったりする is working at all in the following sentence:
実は最近発見された宇宙人のことでしたー。。。なんてことだったりしないわよね。
The たり grammer for listing multiple things makes no sense here. I saw one post on another forum where someone said that だったりする is a new pattern that emerged in the last couple of years and means happen to be. This still feels wrong for the sentence above.
Can someone enlighten me?
I’ll go ahead and explain my interpretation of this usage, but I’m hardly an expert so please take it with a grain of salt.
Although たりする is used for listing non-exhaustive series of actions, it’s not at all uncommon to see it with a single verb. In these cases, its function is to signify that the preceding verb or verb phrase is merely one among many. Here is the how Bunpro describes it:
The challenge with your particular example is that たりする is being used in a far more abstract way. No one is really doing anything in this sentence. Nonetheless, it still takes on the same role in that it signifies that the preceding statement is non-exhaustive.
In its current form, the second sentence is essentially saying “it’s not something like that.” If the sentence omitted たりする and was instead written as “なんてことじゃないわよね。” it would be similar to saying “it’s not that.” I.e. more specifically stating that it’s not about the recently-discovered aliens. Instead, the sentence is presumably trying to say that “it’s not something along those lines” or “it’s not something absurd like that”
In essence, I see it as the difference between directly refuting the first sentence vs. refuting the idea of the first sentence (not something crazy like aliens!). This is a pretty subtle nuance, and there is a bit of overlap with なんて. Anyways, I hope I was able to explain my thoughts in a somewhat comprehensible manner. If someone else has a better way of explaining it, or if I completely missed the mark, please let me know!
Can you give more surrounding context?
I think that I got the meaning of the sentence after discussing it with someone else and thinking about it for quiet a while.
I feel that this is a case where no grammar pattern or dictionary will help you. You need your gut and experience.
Maybe a bit more context before: Before these two sentences, the character is listening some of the crazy things that happened a while ago.
What this sentence wants to say is that: The aliens that were discovered recently… There is no way that it is about them.
The character wants to express that it is kind impossible for this to be the case, but he is very unsure about it. He is kind of expecting the answer to be no, but he is asking anyway. Or he doesn´t want the answer to be yes.
If you read it like this … なんてこと。。。だったりしない。。。わよね.
or if you change it to this:
。。。ということではないわよね
it should be a bit more obvious.
