Timeline for How do we construct sentences ending in わけ?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
25 events
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| Sep 20, 2021 at 4:18 | comment | added | fynxgloire | Hello great post. May I ask, what category would this sentence fit in? I initially thought 3, but then I am leaning towards 1? ->確かに素晴らしいマンションですね。それで、こんなに家賃が高いわけですね。 | |
| Jun 17, 2020 at 8:18 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Aug 25, 2018 at 8:25 | history | edited | chocolate♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 8, 2011 at 20:46 | vote | accept | language hacker | ||
| Sep 29, 2011 at 13:39 | history | edited | Derek Schaab | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 29, 2011 at 13:55 | history | edited | Derek Schaab | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jul 28, 2011 at 14:36 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @language hacker: わけ and わけだ are merely alternate versions of the same thing, as has been clarified in the comments here. You'll have to provide an example sentence so I can tell you which usage pattern it fits into. There's no "わけ(だ) always means X" rule. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 14:15 | comment | added | language hacker | As mentioned above I was asking about the use of わけ at the end of a sentence and not わけだ. I heard it used at the end of a series of questions. What does it mean when it's at the end of a question? | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 13:45 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @phirru: That matches usage #4 on another page I found which sums up わけだ: 私が声をかけても彼は知らん顔をしているわけです。 ("I even try talking to him, and he's just standing there looking like he doesn't see me.") It's kind of a pain to translate into English well, and definitely counts as another one of those case-by-case constructions. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 13:37 | comment | added | phirru | @Derek Schaab: In my grammar book this is explained as follows: "In casual conversation wake, an informal form of wake da, is used quite frequently to give slight emphasis to a fact when the speaker does not expect the hearer to know about it.". Which I think sums it up quite nicely. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 12:25 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @William: Using わけ to give a conclusion (Y→Z) requires some level of objectivity. In other words, given the evidence, anyone could form the conclusion marked by わけ. This objectivity is not present in the example sentence you're referring to, since the preceding context (whatever it is) does not always lead to the logical conclusion that the two married and lived happily. It is a mere statement of fact known only to the speaker. This is why わけ can be left out without affecting the meaning, which is what Yokota was getting at in her paper. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 10:56 | comment | added | William | For "こうして二人は結婚して、幸せに暮らしたわけです。" would "And of course the two married and lived happily." be a better translation? It has that same 'conclusion from reasoning' that the rest of it does. The conclusion comes from facts outside the conversion, like the fact that all fairy tales have a happy ending. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 4:20 | comment | added | Matt | Yes, I know that だ-dropping is common in informal speech, but I am talking about a separate phenomenon, one where わけ is used almost as a sentence-final particle and actually can't be combined with だ without changing in nuance. But I accept that the line between this and a だ-dropped わけだ is very iffy and calls for better evidence than my "it seems to me", so, peace. (Re interpretation of the question, quite true! My assumption is based on the "just about anything you say" part of the question specifically; this struck me as a reference to the semantically bleached わけ I mention above.) | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 3:21 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @Matt: Without an example sentence from the OP we can only guess at which usage is being questioned. :) As far as わけ not followed by だ, this is common in informal speech and not limited to わけ. Borrowing from an example of the first case, we could easily say: 「日本時間のちょうど正午につくわけ。」. The fact that だ is missing doesn't change the function of わけ. Similarly, 「今日は定休日。」 still means the same as 「今日は定休日だ。」, even though the だ is dropped. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 3:15 | comment | added | phirru | To be fair, it's quite hard to determine what exactly the question was asking. There are many ways to "end a sentence in wake" which have been discussed here. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 3:07 | comment | added | Matt | Derek, this is a great summary of the paper and will no doubt be helpful to people looking for info on わけ in general, but my interpretation of the question was that language hacker was asking about the common colloquial use of "category 5" in particular, where わけ appears like a sentence-final particle [specifically NOT followed by だ] affecting implication/discourse structure more than meaning. Maybe it would be nice to throw a note at the top covering that specific colloquial usage before diving in to the full story? | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 2:58 | history | edited | Derek Schaab | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Opening might have been interpreted as overly critical; edited appropriately.
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| Jul 28, 2011 at 2:55 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @sawa: Duly noted. But since language hacker's question included the statement that there is "a certain way of talking where you can end just about anything you say in わけ", I deduced that the OP, in addition to wanting to know how to construct such sentences, is in fact unclear on why and how one would use わけ. (I also know from past teaching experience that this is a particularly tricky bit of Japanese for non-natives to learn, so I imagine many others on this site will benefit from a thorough explanation.) | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 2:52 | comment | added | phirru | @Derek Schaab: Thank you! I haven't had a chance yet to read the paper yet, I'll give it a look as soon as possible. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 2:50 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @phirru: Part of the analysis in the paper I linked makes note of when you can replace each of the five uses of わけだ with either はずだ or ことになる (which can be very close to ということだ). There's a table in the conclusion that summarizes when these substitutions are allowed, but unfortunately there are many exceptional cases within each usage of わけだ (such as whether the clause marked by わけだ is unknown, known, or an unconfirmed past event), so the only way to fully explain the difference would be to translate the entire paper. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 2:50 | comment | added | Derek Schaab | @istraci: That sounds plausible. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 2:40 | comment | added | phirru | Perhaps this warrants its own question, however, is it possible to replace some of these with ということ? For example: "波がずいぶん荒いですね。今日は船が出せないわけですか。" into "波がずいぶん荒いですね。今日は船が出せないということですか。" How does the feeling of the sentence change if this is possible? | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 1:35 | comment | added | istrasci | [[ てなわけで (using て for という, but as to where the な comes from, your guess is as good as mine) ]] Maybe ～というようなわけで??? | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 0:35 | comment | added | user458 | Regarding the usage, your answer is far more accurate than mine. My answer just concentrated on the structure of the sentence, which is what was asked. The usage part that I added was not intended to be extensive. | |
| Jul 28, 2011 at 0:30 | history | answered | Derek Schaab | CC BY-SA 3.0 |