WHY Japanese use ていただきました in the end?

Question

Hello Japanese language admirers. Here is my question.Hope someone will help me. I am now learning the grammar form of て+くださいました; て+いただきました; て+やりました. I know that いただきました equal the word RECEIVE, and the other 2 means GIVE, BUT the problem is, I do not understand exactly WHY Japanese use it as a second verb, that is useless in my opinion.

For example, 私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただきました WHY here it is used the verb RECEIVE??? The translation is "I took my teacher to Kyoto", so WHAT is the word RECEIVE doing in this sentence??????

Answer 1

「私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただきました」
"My teacher took me to Kyoto"

Let's parse the sentence 「私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただきました」 to make your question clear.

The given sentence is a past tense, and if you put it into the form of present tense it will become 「私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただきます」.

「私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただきます」is a polite form of 「私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただく」.

「私は先生に京都へ連れて行っていただく」=「私は」+「先生に」+「京都へ連れて行って」+「いただく」

「京都へ連れて行って」is a conjugated form from 「京都へ連れて行く」, which means " A takes B to Kyoto". Logically, "A takes B to kyoto" could be said "B receives taking-to-kyoto by A".

「私は」= 「私」+「は」, where 「は」is a topic marker. In the phrase "B receives taking-to-kyoto by A" B is 「私」.

「先生に」 means "by the teacher", so A is 「先生」.

「いただく」 is "RECEIVE"

Now you've got all meaningful parts to make a English sentence for the original Japanese sentence.

Answer 2

If you do something for someone or someone does something for you, you could think of it as giving (the action) or receiving (the action). There are lot's of other words like this:

さしあげる

あげる

やる

くださる

くれる

もらう

いただく

etc.

The people above gave good explanations for the grammar's usage.

Answer 3

Why? As other people said, いただきました shows that you (私) received a favor from someone you respect (or owe respect).

Note that, although に can be used to indicate both the one giving and the one receiving the action, in your example 先生に means (roughly) "from the teacher"; whereas to say "I took my teacher to Kyoto" you would use を:

私は先生を京都へ連れて行ってあげました。

Answer 4

Why? It's primarily in order to know who does it to whom. When you express that someone took me somewhere, you have these words.

• 連れて行かれた (passive)
• 連れて行ってもらった

However, the former passive sentence often implies that it's not necessarily favorable to the speaker. So, when you are socially supposed to show your gratitude, you need the latter.

(You might think 先生が連れて行った would be enough, but that usually means "the teacher took someone" instead of "me" because Japanese verbs basically cast actions outward, except 来る or もらう. Likewise, 先生が私を連れて行った has a problem of twisted view or being abrupt in a context where you are the subject of the sentence.)