15050
I'm puzzled by the bold part of the following paragraph which occurs in my
Japanese learner's version of 雪女:

> 二人は毎日、川まで来ると、渡し守に船で川の向こう側へ運んでもらった。  
>  山から帰るときは、また、渡し守に船で川のこちら側まで運んで **もらうのだった** 。

My current understanding of this の+copula construction (my textbook calls it
"extended predicate") is that it explains an action or statement based on the
current context. So in this context perhaps it makes the storytelling more
lively by directly answering a hypothetical question that the reader will ask
after reading the first sentence ("but how will they get back?"). Is that the
purpose of this construction?

A related question is: why is the sentence not written as follows?

> 山から帰るときは、また、渡し守に船で川のこちら側まで運んで **もらったのだ** 。

After all, the action (receiving transportation) took place in the past, and
the story is read in the present. Or it the case that the extended predicate
always "captures" any past tense of a preceding verb?
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2014-03-23T19:39:57.993
15003
2014-03-26T05:28:12.283
4669
question
particle-の copula
過去形＋のだ versus 現在形＋のだった
As noel_lapin mostly answered, this form of sentence does not assume any
implicit question. I don't know the grammatical classification that describes
this use, but "もらうのだった" has a sense of repeated occurrences that became
customary, that they have always done so, not just in this particular
occasion. It is a particularly common form of speech for old story telling, so
much so to the point that whenever I hear it it mentally plays in my mind in
and old man's voice of 日本昔話 TV series :-)

As for your second part of question on why "もらったのだ" wouldn't do, "のだ" adds a
sense of emphasis, that you are absolutely positive that it had happened. It
is natural if the speaker was present at the scene, but does feel a bit odd if
the speaker is telling a story that happened hundreds of years ago somewhere.
In addition, you lose the sense that two men always relied on 渡守 to bring them
back. I'm not sure if I can call this use wrong, but its meaning does change
considerably.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-26T05:28:12.283
15050
2014-03-26T05:28:12.283
3059
15003
answer