What does my grammar book mean?
 

Hi!

I was reading a little bit in my book, Japanese Sentence patterns for Effective Communication, about relative clauses, when I came across something that confuses me.

On page 258 it says;

" 'The computers that were expensive have become cheaper. '

高かったコンピューターが安くなった.

Takakatta konpyuutaa yasuku natta

Here the relative (modifying) clause features an adjective instead of a verb. The tense of this clause may be present or past, and may be either affirmative or negative. However, it must be in the present tense if the state presented in it is concurrent with the action or state presented in the main clause (example 4)[...]My daughter wanted a doll that had blue eyes. 娘 は目が青い人形を欲しがった."

The bold text is bold because I made it so. What does the author mean in the part of the text that is bold? I don't get it. Maybe it's because I'm not a native english speaker.

Does anybody of you guys understand it?

Thanks!

Where is this?

Woops! I made it bold when I wrote it on Wordpad. Sorry.

" 'The computers that were expensive have become cheaper. '

高かったコンピューターが安くなった.

Takakatta konpyuutaa yasuku natta

Here the relative (modifying) clause features an adjective instead of a verb. The tense of this clause may be present or past, and may be either affirmative or negative. However, it must be in the present tense if the state presented in it is concurrent with the action or state presented in the main clause (example 4)[...]4. My daughter wanted a doll that had blue eyes. 娘 は目が青い人形を欲しがった."

It means your relative clause has to be in the present tense if the "wanting the doll" and "doll has blue eyes" happened at the same time. That is to say, if when she wanted it, the doll had blue eyes, then you have to have a present tense clause.
If she wanted a doll that no longer had blue eyes when she wanted it, but had blue eyes, say, 100 years ago, you'd use the past tense in the clause.

Example sentences:
目が青い人形を欲しかった。 She wanted the doll that had blue eyes [when she wanted it].
目が青かった人形を欲しかった。 She wanted teh doll that had had blue eyes [in the past but no longer had blue eyes when she wanted it].

Put another way, if the doll was new and had blue eyes in the store
目が青い人形
If the doll was 100 years old and her eyes had lost the blue color due to age
目が青かった人形

Combining this with a twist on the tense of 欲しい:
目が青い人形が欲しい。 She wants the doll w/blue eyes.
目が青かった人形が欲しい。 She wants the doll that had had blue eyes [in the past but no longer has blue eyes].
目が青い人形が欲しかった。 She wanted the doll w/blue eyes [that had blue eyes when she wanted it].
目が青かった人形が欲しかった。 She wanted the doll that had had blue eyes [in the past but no longer had blue eyes by the time she wanted the doll].

Note that this is a great example of the past perfect tense in English, and its subtlety. Note the "had had" in two of the translations. I think non-natives often would miss this, and many natives might lazily exclude one of the "had"s as well. This mistake would introduce ambiguity into the sentence, potentially solvable via context, but maybe not.

Correct.

Incorrect.

Correct.
__________

To summerize:

We say
（　　　）が欲しかった。 and also
（　　　）を欲しがった。

We DON'T say
（　　　）を欲しかった。

Interesting. I had thought you could swap out the が for an を to add some emphasis, since it's not technically "correct" grammar. Duly noted.

Thing is you actually hear 「～～を欲しい」 on the street once in a while. In schools (elemenatry to college), however, that will always be corrected.

Gotcha. Thanks.
And also thanks about the を〜欲しがる tip. I've never gotten the hang of 〜がる verbs. I can use them, but I just instinctively avoid them since I've never gotten good at using/forming them.