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I am struggling to understand this sentence’s structure:

> 宿題を時間内に終わらせられなかった。

I think I get the idea of causative-passive as in “I was being made to finish
the homework”. However, I noticed that we have the intransitive verb 終わる and
not the transitive 終える. But we also have a direct object 宿題. Unless I am the
object in this case? I am really confused.

Would this sentence translate to:  
**I couldn’t be made to finish the homework in time.**  
Or to:  
**I couldn’t be made to be finished with the homework in time.**

Also, I can’t think of a way not to add the ‘potential form’ in English. Is
there a potential form hidden there somewhere in Japanese?
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2019-03-07T16:55:25.470
65887
2019-03-07T18:57:02.283
2019-03-07T18:57:02.283
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question
parsing passive-voice potential-form causation
Combination of causative-passive and intransive verb with a direct object?
(ら)れる has both a potential meaning and a passive meaning (along with [other
two less common meanings](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/43898/5010)).
For example, 食べられる means both "to be able to eat" and "to be eaten". In your
sentence, れる has a potential meaning.

  * 終わる: (simple intransitive verb) "to end"
  * 終わら **せる** : [causative] "to make something end" (i.e., "to finish something")
  * 終わらせら **れる** : [causative- **potential** ] "can make something end"
  * 終わらせられ **ない** : [negative-causative-potential] "cannot make something end"
  * 終わらせられなかっ **た** : [past-negative-causative-potential] "could not make something end"

> 宿題を時間内に終わらせられなかった。  
>  I could not finish my homework in time.

You can say the same thing using the transitive verb 終える:

> 宿題を時間内に終えられなかった。  
>  I could not finish my homework in time.

Related: [Is there a reason why the passive and the potential form are
identical (at least for える/いる
verbs)?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/60050/5010)
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2019-03-07T18:25:51.433
65888
2019-03-07T18:25:51.433
5010
65887
answer