# 私が好きな人



## Russkitav

・Does the first phrase (私が好きな人) mean "The one that I love" or "The one who loves me" ? I am seeing this as an isolated phrase (so there is no "context").
・Does the second phrase (私を搾り尽くすようだ) mean "It's like you're squeezing me to death/till I pass out/ till I can't take it" ? This is a phrase from a story and the person saying it is being hugged strongly. Which of those "to death/till I ~~~" is the extent of the word 尽くす?

Thank you.


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## hanako52

私が/の好きな人　　The one that I love/like.
私を好きな人　　　　The one who loves/likes me.

絞り尽くすように　I think that　in this context the writer is simply describing the hug is very strong and intense.
Unless you give us more context, we would not know why you thought 尽くすwould imply death.


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## 涼宮

Hanako, how can 好き possibly take を if it's an adjective? Unless you mean 好きになる/好く. It's a surprise to me that を好き exists..


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## Russkitav

hanako52 said:


> 私が/の好きな人　　The one that I love/like.
> 私を好きな人　　　　The one who loves/likes me.
> 
> 絞り尽くすように　I think that　in this context the writer is simply describing the hug is very strong and intense.
> Unless you give us more context, we would not know why you thought 尽くすwould imply death.



Thank you so much for the response hanako52. I also am surprised that 私を好きな人 exists. So I assume that is the (only?) way to say "The one who loves me", correct? [If asking more than one question is against the rules, I am sorry. I didn't know.]


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## patates_frites

涼宮 said:


> Hanako, how can 好き possibly take を if it's an adjective? Unless you mean 好きになる/好く. It's a surprise to me that を好き exists..



Would it make more sense if you read it as: 私を好きである人 ?


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## 涼宮

But wouldn't であるbe the same as だ/です just a different register? 魚を好きだ sounds just wrong since 好き is an adjective. What I found on the Internet about this is that を好き is informal, spoken and mainly used in Tokyo, I don't know how true that is, though. Also found this: http://www.jyoubun-center.or.jp/column/column102.pdf
Again, it's a surprise to me that people even say を好き because, grammatically, it doesn't make much sense.


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## Tonky

Russkitav said:


> ・Does the first phrase (私が好きな人) mean "The one that I love" or "The one who loves me" ? I am seeing this as an isolated phrase (so there is no "context").


It can mean both, depending on context. You will have to ask the writer which he/she meant or you cannot tell 100%, but most likely "the one that I like/love".



> ・Does the second phrase (私を搾り尽くすようだ) mean "It's like you're squeezing me to death/till I pass out/ till I can't take it" ? This is a phrase from a story and the person saying it is being hugged strongly. Which of those "to death/till I ~~~" is the extent of the word 尽くす?


As hanako52 said, we probably need more context to give the exact meaning. 
My *guess* is "as if trying to squeeze all my love out", showing how the hugger was trying to get the best out of the hug. If a translation says "to death", it probably meant to express the degree of how extremely tight the embrace was by 尽くす, which means "to use up", and 絞り尽くす would mean "to squeeze (everything) out".
(I'm afraid you are supposed to create another thread for another topic, "one topic per thread" rule.) 


As for を好き, I'm not completely sure when it started being used, but it is indeed ungrammatical, yet commonly used. People do not question its grammatical awkwardness most of the time unless officially documented.
e.g. ↓「貴方を好きな私」
http://abemao.com/discography/

It may be the influence from English verb "like/love" taking objects and how students learn を as the object marker at school, while not realizing 好き/欲しい are not verbs. (We actually call them 形容*動詞* in Japanese classes, and many do not realize its adjectival nature as we learn them as a kind of verb at school.)
It may have a lot to do with the confusion it makes with the case of OP question 1. "私が好きな人" can mean both "the one I like" and "the one who likes me", but when someone says "私を好きな人", it is clear who likes whom no matter how ungrammatical it is.

p.s.
This is different from the case of using を at "テレビを見たい" which is grammatically fine and more commonly accepted, as opposed to ～を好き. (「テレビを見る」+「したい」but some people find it awkward too. Please refer to this.）
In Japanese classes for second language teaching, it is recommended not to mention the usage of を either way until the learners bump into such examples and ask, to avoid learners' confusion. Remember that languages are alive and evolve with the users' trends.


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## patates_frites

涼宮 said:


> But wouldn't であるbe the same as だ/です just a different register? 魚を好きだ sounds just wrong since 好き is an adjective. What I found on the Internet about this is that を好き is informal, spoken and mainly used in Tokyo, I don't know how true that is, though. Also found this: http://www.jyoubun-center.or.jp/column/column102.pdf
> Again, it's a surprise to me that people even say を好き because, grammatically, it doesn't make much sense.



Interesting and confusing : )

A few pts:
- 好き is a 形容動詞 so not a pure adjective, that may help create a sense of ambiguity in terms of its use.
- This is definitely not a Tokyo-limited issue, but applies to all standard Japanese.
- It is not strictly, grammatically correct.
- However, it may be part of the gray zone of all languages whether written or spoken.

Hypotheses:
- 私が好きだ = ambiguous who likes whom.
- 好く is an archaic verb so 好き is compensating.
- An unconscious alternative to「私を愛している」、「私のことを好きだと思っている」？


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## Tonky

patates_frites said:


> - 好き is a 形容動詞 so not a pure adjective, that may help create a sense of ambiguity in terms of its use.


It is a controversial topic. Please refer to the below link.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/形容動詞#.....E8.A9.9E.E3.81.B8.E3.81.AE.E5.AF.BE.E5.BF.9C
Please note that most Japanese learners learn it as an adjective (sometimes as a noun) in their classes.


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## YangMuye

好き and 嫌い seems to be very special in many aspects. Another similar verb/noun/adjective I can recall is 好み.
Many emotion verbs have both verb form and na-adjective form, e.g. 心配. When na-adjective form is used, the usage is sometimes more like 自発 and often have some restrictions, e.g. the subject must be the speaker. This kind of restriction does not exist in 好き and 嫌い.

As for を, maybe we can simplify the question by treating 形容動詞, 形容詞 and 動詞 as three types of 用言 which have different 活用形, just like what we traditionally do with ク活用・シク活用・カリ活用, etc.
Then を will be allowed in all there types of 用言.

例　　　　　　　活用形
～をしない　　　　ク
～をしたい　　　　ク
～をできそうだ　　ナ
～を利用可能だ　ナ
～を勉強中だ　　名
～をご存知だ　　名

Another thing I found it that, suffixes tend to be conjugated like a na-adjective or noun.

～好きの
～無しで・～無しに
～越しに
～余りの
～抜きで・～抜きの

I don't know why na-conjugation is so strongly preferred.

Maybe we don't even need to distinguish between adjectives and verbs? I have always though adjectives actually behave like verbs in Chinese and Japanese. Even nouns sometimes behave like verbs (which can be predicative and take arguments and modified by adverbials)

adverbial
*大して*変わらない
*極めて*多忙である
その*前に*する

adnominal
*大した*ものだ
長い*髪の*少女
言葉が*武器の*世界
*前の事*

predicative
多忙を*極めている*
出席する*予定だ*
予定より*前だ*

If we agree that nouns like 予定, 神, 武器, etc. can be predicative, then we may adopt 連体格 as a kind of argument marker, as in 長*い*髪, す*る*予定. It may be argued that this is just a kind of ウサギ文, but not every nouns can be used naturally in this way without context.


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## patates_frites

Tonky said:


> It is a controversial topic. Please refer to the below link.
> http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/形容動詞#.....E8.A9.9E.E3.81.B8.E3.81.AE.E5.AF.BE.E5.BF.9C
> Please note that most Japanese learners learn it as an adjective (sometimes as a noun) in their classes.



Could we not sum the situation as such:
1.There are an arguable category of words in Japanese that could be called 形容動詞.
2. 好き is part of this arguable words.
3. 好き holds a greater amount of this ambiguity due to the de facto quasi-desuetude of the verb 好く.

Consequential topics (to be discussed on another thread I suppose, if the occasion arises?):
1. Is 形容動詞 a valid, necessary, or useful parts of speech? (From the pov of old to modern Japanese)
2. Since when is the verb 好く in desuetude? And why?


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