Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I was going through ている, and a question popped up in my that, whether ている be used to denote those acts that are being expressed that haven't been performed habitually?
ている, as we know, can express habitual things e.g. 私は毎日新聞を読んでいる (meaning I read newspaper daily)
Can ている be expressed to show that I don't perform an act habitually (lets say I don't do something daily, weekly etc.) E.g. 私は毎日新聞を読んでいない?
Thank You
So I hope I understand your question here, and this answer makes sense.
First off your eg. sentence works. It implies that you do read the paper, but not everyday.
Lets say you want to use a different time delimiter than everyday; we could use たまに. We have two options for this, Positive and Negative, and both effectively mean the same thing while using opposite logic.
私はたまに新聞を読んでいる
私はたまにしか新聞を読んでいない (Note the use of しか～ vない）
You could also say something like, 毎日読んでいないけど、週4回読んでいます。
Hope that Helps.
