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I just encountered this question:

Conversation:

男の人:森さんに、お伝えいただきたいんですが。
女の人:はい。

It's asking something like 誰が伝えますか and have 3 choices:

Question:(男の人 女の人 森さん)が伝えます。

Answer女の人が伝えます。

There's a rule before the question says that:

AがBにしていただく → Bがする

According to this rule, I think the conversation could be analysed like this:

森さんに伝えていただく → 森さんが伝える

I know いただく is the humble form of もらう, so it matches the understanding that 森さん is the one who gives the favour to do the action(伝える).

However, I did a bit research and there's an answer mentioning that,

[noun]に+してもらう

in some cases, the noun before に could be the receiver rather than the giver.

So I'm wondering if it's the reason why the answer is "女の子" rather than "森さん". But I would like to know in what kind of situation shall we treat the noun before に as a receiver, especially in the question above which is a solitary piece and doesn't have any other context provided.

Could anyone kindly explain this? Thanks in advance.

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  • I think that «森さんに伝えるようお伝えください。» 森さん is a teller.
    – user25382
    Sep 29, 2017 at 13:13
  • @ Suzi just checking, but is your sample text from a native checked source?
    – kandyman
    Sep 29, 2017 at 15:17
  • @kandyman It's actually a listening question from a book called 日本語総まとめN2聴解. The conversation script is provided by the answer keys attached with the book.
    – Suzi
    Sep 30, 2017 at 4:28

1 Answer 1

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に as in 森さんに isn't the marker for (して)もらう but that for 伝える. In other words, the example is synthesis of 男の人が女の人に…してもらう (the man has the woman to do ...) and 女の人が森さんに伝える (the woman tells it to Mori-san).

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  • Thanks. Just wondering if the pause mark「、」in the sentence has a sense to separate 森さんに from (して)もらう?
    – Suzi
    Oct 1, 2017 at 15:23

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