たけしさんは煙草を吸いません。 ---> Takeshi will not smoke. ---- (1)  
たけしさんは煙草を吸わない。 ----> Takeshi will not smoke. (the short form of the above).
---- (2)

たけしさんは煙草を吸っていません。 ----> Takeshi is not a smoker. ---- (3)  
たけしさんは煙草を吸っていない。 -----> Takeshi is not a smoker. (the short form of the
above). ---- (4)

Hopefully those four are correct. If so, then the sentence "I like people who
do not smoke" should be (from using (4)):  
煙草を吸っていない人が好きです。

However, Genki says it's 煙草を吸わない人が好きです which, when using (2), sounds like it's
saying "I like people who will not smoke."
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2020-05-16T08:06:28.523
77345
2020-05-16T08:59:12.937
36838
question
grammar
Continuous state of 煙草を吸う, how to conjugate plain and te-form (polite/short)
> たけしさんは煙草を吸いません。  
>  Takeshi will not smoke.

I think you might be confused about the meaning of 'will'. The English 'will'
is tricky and has two very different meanings that we tend not to notice. You
seem to be treating it with a volitional meaning, but the 'will' expressed by
the plain form of a verb in Japanese can only be future tense. So the
translation you give is valid but in means Takeshi will not smoke in the
future. It does not mean that Takeshi refuses to smoke.

However, for your context you should be using the present tense interpretation
of the plain form, which happily translates to "Takeshi does not smoke", which
is just what you need to say "I like people who do not smoke".

I'd like to say something about the meaning/validity of 煙草を吸わない人が好きです but to
be honest, I'd probably get it wrong. Choice of conjugations in relative
clauses can be quite subtle and I don't feel qualified to comment.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-05-16T08:59:12.937
77347
2020-05-16T08:59:12.937
7944
77345
answer