A question on narration: does きいた mean 'asked' or 'heard'?


> 「おかあさん、すきやきの支度、できた？」  
>  まる子は台所をのぞくと、おかあさんの背中に向かって **きいた** 。  
>  「もうすこしだよ。待ってて」  
>  "Mum, Did you prepare the sukiyaki?"  
>  When Maruko peeked into the kitchen she faced Mum's back and xxx.  
>  "It will be a little while. Keep waiting."

In this extract does きいた refer to what Maruko **asked** in the first line or
what she **heard** in the third line? Or is it my choice? If it's not my
choice what is it that makes the correct answer obvious?

In general in this book I find that both options are used but the
"said/asked/heard etc" is generally in the first clause of the narration if
it's referring to the previous quote.




This is an odd situation, thanks to きく's unusual polysemy. I'm inclined to
read it as 'ask', for two reasons.

First is simply Japanese word order. English is fine putting quotation verbs
on whichever side of the quoted material, but in Japanese, since in most
sentences the verb goes after everything else, it's much more natural to put
it after the quoted material. You can do it the other way, sure, and that
happens all the time, but it's mildly at odds with Japanese's general
tendencies - you have to put it in a separate sentence, and it comes off
sounding a bit more like _'He spoke. "This is his quote."'_ than _'He said
"this is a quote"'_.

Second is the semantics of the other two verbs in the sentence. Each of them
describes an action that まる子 has some degree of agency in - 'peek through' and
'face towards'. 'Hear' is a bit out of place, in that it would be much less up
to まる子 whether or not she heard - that's largely out of her control, while the
facing and the peeking are quite voluntary. With 'hear', you get a sentence
like 'Maruko peeked into the kitchen, faced her mum's back and heard (it)',
which, while intelligible, is a bit odd. If the goal was to say that she
actively listened, the author would almost certainly have chosen a phrase to
highlight the intentionality of the listening (perhaps 耳を澄ました), as 聞く
corresponds to English 'listen' only in the sense of 'listen to music/the
radio/some other intentionally-chosen background noise'. If the goal was to
say that she 'heard the following information', I might have expected
something like ...向かって、 **これを** 聞いた.

So I'm fairly confident that it means 'asked', since it's quite natural for
'asked' but slightly unusual for 'heard' or 'listened'. The reason that it's
not in the first clause is because of the sequencing of events - the peeking,
facing, and asking happen in that order. The author probably gave the content
of the quote ahead of time to avoid breaking the sequence into multiple
sentences (implying a longer pause between the peeking/facing and the asking
than was meant), and to avoid having the quoting verb come before the quoted
material.




This is an odd situation, thanks to きく's unusual polysemy. I'm inclined to
read it as 'ask', for two reasons.

First is simply Japanese word order. English is fine putting quotation verbs
on whichever side of the quoted material, but in Japanese, since in most
sentences the verb goes after everything else, it's much more natural to put
it after the quoted material. You can do it the other way, sure, and that
happens all the time, but it's mildly at odds with Japanese's general
tendencies - you have to put it in a separate sentence, and it comes off
sounding a bit more like _'He spoke. "This is his quote."'_ than _'He said
"this is a quote"'_.

Second is the semantics of the other two verbs in the sentence. Each of them
describes an action that まる子 has some degree of agency in - 'peek through' and
'face towards'. 'Hear' is a bit out of place, in that it would be much less up
to まる子 whether or not she heard - that's largely out of her control, while the
facing and the peeking are quite voluntary. With 'hear', you get a sentence
like 'Maruko peeked into the kitchen, faced her mum's back and heard (it)',
which, while intelligible, is a bit odd. If the goal was to say that she
actively listened, the author would almost certainly have chosen a phrase to
highlight the intentionality of the listening (perhaps 耳を澄ました), as 聞く
corresponds to English 'listen' only in the sense of 'listen to music/the
radio/some other intentionally-chosen background noise'. If the goal was to
say that she 'heard the following information', I might have expected
something like ...向かって、 **これを** 聞いた.

So I'm fairly confident that it means 'asked', since it's quite natural for
'asked' but slightly unusual for 'heard' or 'listened'. The reason that it's
not in the first clause is because of the sequencing of events - the peeking,
facing, and asking happen in that order. The author probably gave the content
of the quote ahead of time to avoid breaking the sequence into multiple
sentences (implying a longer pause between the peeking/facing and the asking
than was meant), and to avoid having the quoting verb come before the quoted
material.

