「ずっと触ってたくなるよね」: te form + たくなる


I was watching a "Chibi Maruko Chan" episode about Maruko wanting to pet a
fluffy dog. In the subtitles, I saw「ずっと触ってたくなるよね」. So I understand that ずっと
means "continuously," and that さわって is the te-form of 触る. What I don't
understand is what たくなるよね means. At first, I thought that たくなる was たい (En:
want) conjugated to たく when なる (En: become) is attached. However, たい is
typically attached to the masu-stem of the verb, not the te-form. This is
where the confusion arises.




As you guessed in your comment, ～てたくなる is a form of ～ていたくなる. (I wouldn't call
it an error, though. This is a very common colloquial pronunciation.) It is
not a shortened form of したくなる, because したくなる cannot even fit in these
sentences to begin with.

～ていたくなる is form of ～ていたい, which is itself a form of ～ている. As ～ていたい means 'want
to ～ている', ～ていたくなる means 'become wanting to ～ている'. With your example,
ずっと触っていたくなる would mean '[If I pet it], I'd want to be petting it for ever'.

