37044
There is an example sentence from <http://maggiesensei.com/> that has been
bothering me for a while:

あの子はだんだん可愛くなってくるね。

This is translated as "She has been getting cuter and cuter. (until now and
maybe in future as well)"

But isn't なってくる in the present/future? Does it mean she's "been getting" or
"will get"?

If it was "been getting", wouldn't it be なってきた?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-29T15:00:18.020
37042
2016-07-29T15:24:03.483
12121
question
grammar tense
Is this sentence in the future?
It really does mean she has been getting cuter, despite the present/future
tense. The key is the note in the parentheses that she may get cuter in the
future too.

Which tense you use with -てくる or -ていく depends on when the change starts and
ends.

> -てくる - became cute in the past, will continue getting cuter in the future  
>  -ていく - became cute now, and will continue getting cuter into the future  
>  -てきた - became cute in the past, stopped now  
>  -ていった - became cute in the past, stopped sometime in the past

As you can see, neither past tense one will continue into the future, whereas
both the present tense ones do. So if you'd used きた instead, it would imply
that she would stop getting cuter now. Since the author meant (in the
parentheses) that the action might continue into the future, she used the
present tense to indicate so rather than the past.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-29T15:24:03.483
37044
2016-07-29T15:24:03.483
9749
37042
answer