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I have been looking at conjunctive forms of verbs and my grammar books shows me a negative and affirmative version of ば but what about a past tense and a past tense negative?

Would they be じゃなてれば and くなかてれば?

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  • I haven't gotten this far in exploring なら、でも what i am assuming is that acts the same way as ば it is just the past tense form. So it would be a sentence something like Since they didn't go to the store, we have now food.
    – Myeong
    Jan 14, 2012 at 7:26
  • 'Since they didn't go to the store, we have now food'???
    – user1016
    Jan 14, 2012 at 7:47
  • @Chocolate I think they meant "we have no food" and the w is a typo.
    – Troyen
    Jan 16, 2012 at 4:11
  • We don't use なら/ば etc. to say 'Since they didn't go to the store, we have no food.' It'd be like 「買い物に/店に行かなかった'ので'/'から'、食料/食べるもの/食べ物がない。」.
    – user1016
    Jan 16, 2012 at 7:08

3 Answers 3

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The past tense is shown by た, and its ば form should be たらば. However, "ば" is usually omitted in this case, so normally "たら" is used by itself without "ば".

E.g. 雨が降ったら中止だ。 If it rained the (event) will be cancelled.

The negative for past tense is なかった (E.g. 降らなかった), formed by ない + た, so its ば form should follow the rule for た to be なかったら. Again ば is omitted.

E.g. 私が行かなかったら、がっかりしますよね。 If I don't go, (he) would be disappointed.

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  • You mean...たらば is also acceptable?
    – user1016
    Jan 14, 2012 at 7:09
  • Actually I've never seen it ....
    – fefe
    Jan 14, 2012 at 7:14
  • @fefe-san, Ah, OK. lol...
    – user1016
    Jan 14, 2012 at 7:16
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Recall that (-eba) attaches to a verb, and past tense affix turns a verb into something other than a verb. That means you cannot directly attach to past tense. You need to insert なら or in between the past tense and . In that case, can be omitted.

...た(な)ら(ば)

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  • the present tense affirmative:

    「走れば」, 「走るならば」, 「走るのならば」(=「走るなら」, 「走るのなら」)

  • the present tense negative:

    「走らなければ」, 「走らないならば」, 「走らないのであれば」 (=「走らないなら」, 「走らないのなら」)

  • the past tense affirmative:

    「走ったならば」 (=「走ったら」, 「走ったなら」, 「走っていたら」)

  • the past tense negative:

    「走らなかったならば」, but I think 「走らなかったら」, 「走っていなかったら」 would be more natural.

Oops, I was off the point?

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  • @cypher san... thank you again! Ahh I feel so bad...
    – user1016
    Jan 14, 2012 at 8:17
  • 1
    No, it's OK :) I've tried to rewrite various sections of the editing guide BTW as I thought some of my explanations etc could've been better written. 時間があったらのぞいてみてね、あはは^^
    – cypher
    Jan 15, 2012 at 3:17

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