Using とき
 

Hello everyone,

I'm having difficulty with an example used in Japanese for Busy People II:

今時間がないので来週会ったとき話しましょう。

I'm not sure why た form is used before とき because the event is taking place in the future. So why wasn't the example written like this:

今時間がないので来週会うとき話しましょう。

My only guess is that it has something to do with both actions taking place simultaneously. I'm unsure about this, it feels a bit vague, so I'd appreciate any comments.

Thanks for reading.

This た doesn't indicate the past tense. 会った is the attributive form modifying the noun 時.　If a teacher says "I will only accept typed papers.", that "typed" isn't in the past tense, either.　

今時間がないので来週会ったとき話しましょう。 means that the speaker and listener want to meet and talk next week.

今時間がないので来週会うとき話しましょう。 is not necessarily an incorrect sentence but if a native speaker ever said this, it would mean that the two persons are already scheduled to meet next week and they want to talk about something that has little or nothing to do with the original purpose of the meet-up.

Thanks Sashimister for your reply, I really appreciate it. I'm sure it's a perfect grammatical explanation, but unfortunately I don't really understand what means. This is of course my fault, because I don't understand grammatical terminology. I have a feeling that before I'm done learning Japanese I'm going to become very familiar with the grammatical lingo.

Actually, I wilted a bit inside when you explained た doesn't indicate past tense. Up until now I thought た form was just plain past form.

Can anyone, try to make this grammatical point easier for me to understand or provide some more examples? Sorry for being so dense.

Attributive verb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
You'll find Wikipedia is quite useful in 2010. :)

Summary: "Attributive form of a verb" is when a verb in Japanese is used to describe a noun rather than serve as the predicate.

Oh, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_(grammar)

I suggest you learn grammar vocabulary. You'll need it when studying a language as a not-one-year-old!

Thanks KyleGoetz, for the friendly tip. I'm afraid, I find wikipedia's grammatical entries also difficult to understand. They don't seem to written for the ordinary person, and often leave a person more confused when they started out. Thanks for stopping by and taking the trouble to type an answer though. Greatly appreciated.

Ok, I think i've got it. It's a bit like - 'by next week I will have typed the report'. Like a past participle to indicate an action that will be completed at some time in the future, hence the reason why it does not have a past tense.

今時間がないので来週会ったとき話しましょう

means, I don't have time right now, but by next week we will have met and conversed.

Basically, 会った is modifying とき. とき="time" so it's saying, in effect, "the time at which we met already," or something to that effect. However, you don't want to use such a literal translation.

Here, it's saying something like "let's talk at the time-we-have-met."

Another example:
日本に住んでいるとき、日本語を勉強していました。
(I-am-)living-in-Japan time, I studied Japanese.

More artfully,
When I lived in Japan, I was studying Japanese.

Beginners and intermediates alike make this mistake in constructing the sentence:
日本に住んでいたとき、日本語を勉強していました。

Another example:
日本に行くときに、日本語を勉強したほうがいいよ。
go-to-Japan time, you should study Japanese.
日本に行ったときに、日本語を勉強したほうがいいよ。
went-to-Japan time, you should study Japanese.

The first sounds like before you go, you should study. The second sounds like once you've gone/while you are there.

At least, that's the way I think about them. I know even people at my lower-advanced level still make that mistake—using verb modifier + とき is a tricky thing! I may have made a mistake; if so, I hope I get corrected.

Do not translate this. Many things between Japanese and English are better left understood, than translated.

What is important here is the nuance that Sashimister taught you. Just saying 会う時 indicates you have already prearranged to meet for some other reason, whereas 会った時 does not.

Umm.. I suppose we should ask Sashimister to be sure, but I feeｌ like 日本に住んでいたとき、日本語を勉強していました。 sounds better.

Just googling に住んでいる時、　I cannot find any other sentence structured like that one. However, に住んでいた時、I find several.

Ex:私は以前横浜に住んでいた時、TVKの「中央競馬ワイド中 継」を見ていました。ところ... - Yahoo!知恵袋
アメリカに住んでいたときに、ピーナッツバター製造機 がありました。メーカー、連絡先を調べてください。 - 人力検索はてな
■アメリカの銀行口座（自分の口座）に送金する方法 - BIGLOBEなんでも相談室

Anyhow, perfect natural grammar and particles are not exactly my strong point (particularly basic stuff, that I never gained a complete understanding of in the first place, but just kept moving forward, so I could be totally wrong here).

You're probably right. On second thought, I can't recall ever saying 住んでいるとき. But I can imagine saying 〜前に instead for "before ~."