くる and いく as auxiliary verbs
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Question: Could someone possibly give a more detailed explanation of くる and いく as auxiliary verbs? I used to think that してくる means "has been doing" and していく means "will be doing", but that doesn't seem to make sense everywhere I come across them.
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Answer
てくる and ていく express an action "coming" and "going", in a very broad sense. A quick look:
クマが里に下りて来た.
わざわざ持ってきてくれてありがとう.
Moreover, it is not limited to just "has been doing" and "will be doing" in direct translations.
てくる and ていく, through space and time
てくる and ていく can refer to motion through both space and time.
Time is related to as [come to this time, go from this time], while space is related as [come from there to here, go from here to there].
The above concept exists only partially in English. Thus, most translations don't show it. If it might be natural to include in Japanese, it might also be equally natural to cut out in English.
For example:
東京ドームでエリック・クラプトンのライブを見てきたよ。
I saw an Eric Clapton concert at the Tokyo Dome (and came here/back).
[It doesn't translate so well because the information is considered obvious in English. You're either still at the concert or you're not.]
人間は誰でもいつか死ぬのが分かってきた時、私は５歳をすぎなかった。
I wasn't more than 5 years old when I came to understand that all people will someday die.
[Here it works in both languages. The understanding came to the speaker.]
A sense of graduality
てくる and ていく can also express a sense of graduality; i.e. something gradually happens over a length of time. Thus, for example, Autumn arrives and brings its cool weather by gradual, and not immediate, transition:
秋もだんだん深まってきて、すっかり涼しくなりました！
くる also often indicates that something came to affect the speaker.
Relation between くる, いる, and いく (diagram)
A reasonably accurate depiction of the relation between くる, いる, and いく. (Note: 現在 might be a future or past "present", depending on context.)
過去 → 現在 → 未来
くる → いる → いく
Further examples of usage
- 電話をかけてくる: "I will go there and make a phone call (and come back again)" or "He will make a phone call (to us)."
- 電話をかけている: (ambiguous) "He has made ~" or "He is making ~"
- 電話をかけていく: (A nuance of conspiracy/strategy; i.e. you will continually make phone calls for the time being.)
Adding on to the above:
- 電話をかけた: "He made a call somewhere (not here)."
- 電話をかけてきた: (ambiguous) "He made a call to us" or possibly "He has made lots of phone calls." (When the subject is "I", it will become: "I went there, made a call, then came back here".)
