80764
I'm someone who always tries to get behind the logic of every grammar point,
and for Japanese, my endeavor has been fruitful most of the time. But not
always, for example when わかる is used as an imperative, as in わかってくれ, for
example. What is understood is marked by が in the case of わかる, so わかる doesn't
have the meaning of actively "understanding" something, but instead of
something "trickling down" and being "dissolved" and thus unterstood. At least
that's how I've always understood it.

Here's my question: If it's not about actively understanding, how does it make
sense to say「わかってくれ」to another person? After all, they are not the agent of
わかる. Instead, the thing understood is the agent.

My guess: わかる is one of those words (like 好き) which theoretically demand が,
but where the semantics of the words themselves have made them quite
susceptible to grammatical change in that regard, making it far easier for
them to tolerate を. わかる originally just meant "to be divided" as far as I
know, so of course it would take が. But its current meaning might be
disconnected far enough from that original meaning for it to now mostly be
perceived as just "to understand", where the usage of が that comes along with
it would only be an old grammatical relict that is starting to vanish in
casual speech. I presume English might have had some influence here, too. All
of that is just an educated guess, but it seems plausible judging from my
experience.

Thanks for reading! This could have been a two-liner, but I always end up
writing half an essay...
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-20T21:31:09.850
80744
2020-09-22T05:08:36.660
33212
question
grammar
Logic behind 「わかってくれ」
When we say 分かってくれ and such, we have to use **を**.

  * そのこと **を** 分かってください。
  * ちゃんと相手の気持ち **を** 分かれよ！
  * 子供にもっと数学 **を** 分かって欲しい。
  * 彼女に事情 **を** 分かってもらいました。

These を can **not** be replaced with が, so I can at least say 分かる is
**transitive** in these examples, just like English "to understand".

But when can we use 分かる as a transitive verb? It's complicated and I can't
explain it well, but you can read [Darius Jahandarie's
explanation](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/27367/5010). The answer is
about 好き, but 分かる is listed as an example of weird verbs where が and を are
sometimes interchangeable.

  * 彼はスペイン語 **が** 分かる: OK
  * 彼はスペイン語 **を** 分かる: NG
  * 彼にスペイン語 **を** 分かってもらう: OK
  * 彼にスペイン語 **が** 分かってもらう: NG
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-22T05:08:36.660
80764
2020-09-22T05:08:36.660
5010
80744
answer