Another 了 question: 现在让我吃了这盘羊肉

[anonymoose]

Someone posted a picture of some roast lamb, accompanied by the single sentence 现在让我吃了这盘羊肉.

 

At  the time, I asked a native speaker about the function of 了, and his explanation was:

 

这句话，如果没有这个“了”，那么就是，“现在让我吃这盘羊肉”。如果别人听起来，就会是，“谁让你吃这盘羊肉的？”。如果加了“了”，“现在让我吃了这盘羊肉”，你让别人听起来，就会知道是自己想让自己吃了这盘羊肉。这句话听起来比较别扭，因为这句话，她没有办法对别人说，她只能对自己说。

 

So, I kind of get it, but not really. Can somebody provide a more grammatical explanation for the function of 了 here, and perhaps give another example or two?

[陳德聰]

I don’t get the same interpretation as your informant and I don’t think 了 does what he said it does.

 

Edit: well now I am sitting here perplexed.

[arrow]

I think the difference is that with 了, you kinda saying that you wish to finish that dish first then do other things.

[davoosh]

As far as I'm aware, this is just the aspectual use of le in a kind of imperative.

 

This usage is common in Cantonese with the particle 'zo2', especially when the 'end point' of the action is emphasised, e.g.:

 

sik6 zo2 keoi5 - eat it up

 

Similarly in Mandarin:

 

chi1 le ta1 - eat it up

 

现在让我吃了这盘羊肉: Now let me eat (up) this dish.

[anonymoose]

15 hours ago, arrow said:

I think the difference is that with 了, you kinda saying that you wish to finish that dish first then do other things.

 

3 hours ago, davoosh said:

As far as I'm aware, this is just the aspectual use of le in a kind of imperative.

 

Makes sense in the context. I'm just surprised that 了 doesn't seem to be used very frequently in this way, or maybe I just haven't been paying attention.

 

If it is simply an aspectual marker of completion, then presumably one could also say:

 

现在让我看了这本书。

你可别想吃了这块蛋糕。

 

Do these sentences sound natural?

[arrow]

Quote

现在让我看了这本书。

你可别想吃了这块蛋糕。

The former one makes no sense unless it's a very thin book, you simply cannot finish a book in a short time.

The latter one is completely ok to me.

[anonymoose]

12 hours ago, arrow said:

The latter one is completely ok to me.

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

So is it alright to say 现在让我看这本书 but not 现在让我看了这本书 because the former does not imply finishing the book? And, let's say I had already read most of the book. Would it then make sense to say 现在让我看了这本书, or does this imply from beginning to end? I don't see why it necessarily would.

 

As for 你可别想吃了这块蛋糕, does this imply that you may get some, but you cannot eat it all? Presumably 你可别想吃这块蛋糕 means you won't get any. Is that right?

 

 

 

 

[arrow]

Quote

As for 你可别想吃了这块蛋糕, does this imply that you may get some, but you cannot eat it all? Presumably 你可别想吃这块蛋糕 means you won't get any. Is that right?

Yes you can say that, the former is not as strongly rejected as the latter.

Quote

So is it alright to say 现在让我看这本书 but not 现在让我看了这本书 because the former does not imply finishing the book? And, let's say I had already read most of the book. Would it then make sense to say 现在让我看了这本书, or does this imply from beginning to end? I don't see why it necessarily would.

That's a little off too. 现在让我看这本书吧 or 现在我要看这本书了 sounds more natural. 看书 is generally time consuming, and language is about common sense, so don't be scientific on this.

[陳德聰]

Language is systematic and scientific ^_^ just because something is hard to get to the bottom of doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer.

[Tomsima]

I get what's going on now after reading the above comments. When I first read the sentence my brain tried to make sense of it by using 現在 as 現在的情況, so the sentence came out as '(the situation I'm in) now made me eat this mutton'

I kind of envisioned it as a person on a diet was going through a tough patch and was like 'screw it, because of 'now', I'm eating this'.

 

Is this also possible? I don't have enough feeling for the inventive and wonderful ways in which people write their wechat updates

[Messidor]

Arrow is right. 吃了 would be best translated into "finish/eat it all", while 吃 is simply "eat".

了 is a aspectual marker but it doesn't necessarily indicate the action is already finished. It simply indicates the the state of action is finished either in future or in the past.

Since 了 is multifunctional, I'll use another unifunctional aspectual marker (in my mother tongues and in many other southern dialects) to replace 了 (but the meaning remains the same), 现在让我吃掉这块蛋糕。掉 is an aspectual marker that denotes "dispose of sth".

 

When someone has read most of the book, it'll be a bit odd for him/her to say 现在让我看了这本书. A more natural sentence (adverb instead of a marker) is 现在让我看完这本书.

However, it's more natural to say 让我先吃了蛋糕 (=让我先吃完蛋糕) when someone has eaten most part of the cake but hasn't finished it yet, than the case about the book above. So this is another piece of evidence that the type of action/event is a variable that will influence the usages of functional words and sentence structures(, which means the examples a learner/scholar gives may be biased in very subtle but significant ways).

 

To sum up, 了 can be an aspectual marker that indicates the state of action/event but not the tense;

certainly 了 can indicate that the agent will start a whole new event, but whether the agent will resume an event in progress is dependent on the context (restricted interpretation);

the adv. 完 is semantically more accurate/narrower than 了.

 

edit-------------------

After a brief discussion with a friend who's working on telicity, we both agreed that 吃了 is better rephrased as "finish the action of eating (/ eat it all)", that is, what's definitely finished is the action itself; the state of the object depends on the context --- though finishing changing the state of the object often means a complete change (让我看了这本书:the most prominent reading is "let me finish the book"), under certain context such change may be incomplete. Eg. “等下！我吃了生日蛋糕再走。”他随即咬了两口蛋糕，就匆匆忙忙跑出去了。In this instance the agent finished eating but (s)he didn't finish the whole cake --- (s)he simply wanted to make the birthday ritual complete by taking two bites of the whole cake.

see the papers below for more info