Why is the plain negative in this sentence translated as "haven't"?

Question

まだ部屋が暖まらない

I encountered this sentence in an Anki deck (core 10k) and I can't seem to wrap my head around it, specifically its translation. According to the deck, the English sentence is "The room hasn't warmed up yet". Now in this case, wouldn't the plain negative mean "will not warm up yet" or "will still not warm up". If I remember correctly textbooks teach you that まだ + ていない is the one that expresses the English "haven't...yet". Is this a mistranslation or am I missing something?

(I also thought about translating it as "The room will not warm up, as we HAVEN'T done anything to warm it up", so it is impossible for the room to get any warmer, hence the plain negative. It is most likely just me brainstorming, but who knows...)

Answer 1

You can say まだ～しない instead of まだ～して(い)ない for some verbs:

• 注文がまだ来ないよ。
  = 注文がまだ来ていないよ。
  My order has not arrived yet.
• 手紙がまだ届きません。
  = 手紙がまだ届いていません。
  The letter has not come yet.
• 彼女の気持ちがまだ分からないんだ。
  = 彼女の気持ちがまだ分かってないんだ。
  I haven't understood her feelings yet.

But this is not true for many other verbs:

• この本はまだ買わない。
  I'm still not going to buy this book.
  この本はまだ買っていない。
  I have not bought this book yet.
• 彼はまだ昼食を食べない。
  He is not going to eat lunch yet.
  彼はまだ昼食を食べていない。
  He has not eaten lunch yet.
• 俺はまだ死なないぞ。
  I will not die yet.
  俺はまだ死んでないぞ。
  I am not dead yet.

So, what's the difference between these two verb groups? According to 初級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック(第2巻), the verbs in the former group have a certain goal and involves a temporal or spatial change over time.

完了の否定は、古くは「～ない」で表されていました。（略）現在では、こうした場合に「～ない」が使えるのは「（時間が）経つ」「着く」「来る」などの、到達点の存在を含意し、かつ、時間的経過や移動を伴う空間的経過を含む動詞に限られます。

I somehow feel there are more complex rules, but this at least explains your example sentence 部屋が暖まらない; there is a clear goal (i.e., the desired temperature) and the room temperature changes gradually over time, so まだ暖まらない is interchangeable with まだ暖まっていない. Nevertheless, the latter is more common.

Related:

• When using もう and まだ does a negative verb always have to be in the (ている) present continuous form?

Answer 2

It's true that oftentimes we Japanese speakers use the simple form to talk about the future, but the form is the basic form and it basically refers to the present.

Japanese expresses temporal-where very much by adverbs and by the context instead of verb forms.

In your case, very much because of まだ, we want だろう to mean the future.

まだ部屋が暖まらないだろう。

It might be the future for the speaker but might be still about the current condition: the speaker's guess of the current condition.

If it's only

部屋が暖まらない

it's talking about a never-ending current moment, and I think it can be said that it includes the future.

Now to mean this:

"The room will not warm up, as we HAVEN'T done anything to warm it up"

This is natural:

まだ部屋は暖まらないですよ。まだヒーターも何もつけていないのですから。

Or

まだヒーターをつけていないから、部屋は暖まらない。