What does the らせ in this sentence?

Question

相手は多分徒歩、尾行を悟らせつつ悟らせない、という絶妙な距離でいるからには、私の走りに対応出来るとも思えない

I'm having difficulty understanding this part 悟らせつつ悟らせない

Is this some kind of combination between causative and passive ?

Answer 1

The important part here is the effect of つつ .　

The pattern in question is v-causative-stem-つつ-V-causative-negation

I take this to reflect usage 2 of つつ:

２ 二つの動作・作用が矛盾して行われることを表す。…にもかかわらず。…ていても。「早起きが健康にいいと知りつつ、つい寝すごしてしまう」

Giving a meaning of roughly, "Just on the verge of letting me catch my tail" perhaps more literally "while letting me start to realize the tail without letting me realize the tail"

For the whole, I might say

It's unthinkable to me that someone could match my opponent who is probably on foot, could match my running, staying at a miraculous distance, where I just can't realize I'm being tailed.

Note that I'm stripping out the causative in my English and replacing it with "can."

Answer 2

There is no passive form in 悟らせつつ悟らせない (there is no れる/られる!), although there are two causative forms. The literal translation would be "making him aware while not making him aware".

This certainly is a strange and paradoxical expression, but probably this phrase means something like "making him worried that he might be followed, but never making him sure that he is followed".

Answer 3

not Passive, just Causative. ( This page seems to be good http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/causepass )

    尾行を悟らせつつ悟らせない

The shadower is making the "mark" notice and not notice the shadowing

-- In a [light novel] it kind-of makes sense, but (taken literally) in real life, it's not possible to do.

---

Much more common to put it like this :

    「見えそうで見えない」

    「出来そうで出来ない」

http://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/qa/5914978.html