28713
Can this mean (ignoring likelihood or awkwardness) both

> He says I'm eating

and

> He starts talking if/when I'm eating

?
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2015-10-16T01:41:52.083
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2015-10-16T21:00:04.757
2015-10-16T01:43:50.853
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question
grammar particle-と
「食べていると話す」 Can this have two meanings?
I ignored likelihood and awkwardness. I assumed that you are only interested
in usage of と and 話す, and that it is allowed to add any contexts.

「食べていると話す」can both mean "X tells Y that Z is eating" or "X talks to Y while Z
is eating."

However, the pitch-accents are different in standard Japanese.

> 「 **食** べてい **る** とは **な** す」(X tells Y that Z is eating.)
>
> 「 **食** べている **と** は **な** す」(X talks to Y while Z is eating.)

(Bold means high pitch accent, otherwise low. There were six native speakers
around me when I noticed this, and five of them agreed with me. One said no
difference. Yet, the one is not from Kanto area.)

* * *

I must agree that there is awkwardness in the former sentence when this has no
context. This comes from the grammatical aspects and the meanings.

「話す」has no aspect nor tense (it is not 話している or 話した for example.) So, it might
be habitual or something in quite general situation. And,「話す」is "to talk" or
"to tell", which "needs to relay some information." However, "食べている
(continuous aspect)" itself rarely has much information, yet there could be a
special context that whether "食べている" or not is really important. These facts
make the situation awkward. You need to come up a special context that "食べている"
almost always has much information.

Well, I think the latter sentence is also strange. It is hard to imagine a
person who only talks in a certain condition.

So, if you change「話す」to continuous aspect and change「食べる」, you can make more
natural sentence easier.

> 「逮捕されたテロリストは政府に対し、仲間が行方不明の大統領の身柄を預かっていると話している。」  
>  The arrested terrorist is telling the government that their group has
> caught the missing president.

I tried to make a natural sentence out of「食べていると話す」, which was hard.

> 目連は地獄を見ることができ、ときおり鬼が死者を食べていると話す。  
>  Maudgalyayana (one of the Buddha's closest disciples) can see the hell, and
> he sometimes tells that Oni is eating a dead.

I googled and found about 50 results, all of them were "X tells Y that Z is
eating" type.

Example from web:

> 「ピエトロ」について佐々木は、普段色々な料理にかけて食べていると話す。  
>  Sasaki tells that she usually eats various dishes with PIETORO sauce.  
>  <http://rocketnews24.com/2011/09/17/131839/>
>
> スリムな女性ほど「ダイエットはしていない」「よく食べている」と話すもの。  
>  Slim women tend to say that "I do not diet" or "I eat a lot."  
>  <http://beauty.oricon.co.jp/beauty/diet/news/2058828/full/>

These two are interesting. The former is an advertisement of sauce and the
latter is an article about a diet so that eating itself is important.

Lastly, I could not find "X talks to Y while Z is eating." type sentences, so
let me make up one.

> その老人は、私がにんじんを食べていると戦争のことを話す。  
>  The old talks about the war while I am eating carrots.
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2015-10-16T19:08:48.110
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2015-10-16T21:00:04.757
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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answer