I'm watching Tanya the evil to learn some more complicated kanji and speech,
and this one sentence I don't understand completely the usage of と in the
sentence “つまりは勝利をめざさないと”. The translation that's given says "In other words,
You wouldn't try to win?". Is と used to make a question? From what I know
about the usage of と, it's used to imply something in an If/Then format.
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2020-10-08T05:50:39.120
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2020-10-08T22:47:19.007
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question
grammar particle-と
Usage of と in the end of a sentence
There exists more と particles

  * and/with と
  * conditional (if) と
  * quotation particle と
  * possibly と related to to-adverbs (maybe it's related to quotation? But that's just my guess)
  * (and maybe more?)

This is a case of a quotation particle と, similarly like " quotes in English
(however it only marks the ending of a quote), but と can mark both direct and
indirect quote.

The speaker here is rephrasing what the other person has said/implied/conveyed
(or the speaker thinks they did), this is also hinted by つまり. Whether this is
a question or not will explicitly be given mostly in intonation, whether the
ending is rising (a question) or not (a statement), not by a presence of と.
This particle can be used for statements just as well.

This sentence is incomplete in that it is missing a main verb, which is often
the case with と particle - from context we can typically infer that the
speaker meant a form of 言う、 聞く、考える or similar
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2020-10-08T08:58:09.437
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2020-10-08T09:08:02.333
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つまりは勝利をめざさないと can be interpreted in two ways:

  1. つまりは「勝利をめざさない」と(言っているのか)。  
So, you are saying "I won't try to win"(, huh?)

  2. つまりは勝利をめざさないと(いけない)。  
So, you must try to win.

If 1 is correct, と is a **quotative particle** without an explicit
corresponding verb like 言っている or 考えている. That is, と implies 勝利をめざさない is someone
else's statement (in this case, "your" statement).

If 2 is correct, と is a **conditional particle** , and ないと means "if not" as a
whole. As you probably know, Japanese negative-if's commonly mean "have to" by
themselves without explicitly saying the corresponding main clause.

> 行かないと。  
>  = 行かなければ。  
>  = 行かなくては。  
>  = 行かなくちゃ。  
>  = I must go. / I gotta go.

I can't tell which is the correct interpretation without the context and the
audio source. There is usually a small pause before と if it's 1. Either way, と
is **not** a question particle by itself.
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2020-10-08T21:48:09.773
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answer