I’m watching this anime and there’s A and B at the table together, C comes in and says: 珍しいわね！二人で食堂なんて！ (rare to see you two together in the cafeteria)
A responds こいつが呼びにきたんだ。(he called me here)
(parentheses are the subtitles)
My question is just: what grammatically is に doing in A’s response? I’m not sure what its particular (pun intended) function is here.
3 comments
https://www.kanshudo.com/grammar/%E3%81%AB%E3%81%8F%E3%82%8B
Not sure if there is anything more to analyze about the use of に here.
I feel like I know that dialog. Though I’m sure there are many cafeteria scenes in existence.
The most common use of verb stem without masu に行く and に来る in this way is to express how someone has gone somewhere or come to the speaker’s location to do _____. The に denotes the action the speaker is doing the movement for.
私はお菓子を買いに出かけます。Used 出かける here but meaning is pretty much the same. The overall purpose is to show that the speaker is going out to buy candy. The verb is the movement, and the action has yet to be completed.
If I had to guess, the literal translation would be “he came here to call me” (further implying that he then called B after he arrived and B agreed to come). However that is not natural in English, so the sentence was altered to represent a similar idea. We imply the opposite in English. The arrival is implied, and the following action is expressed.
If I’m understanding correctly, the intended meaning of the second sentence is: this guy came to call me.
‘Koitsu ga’ = the one performing the action of ‘yobi ni kuru’ is ‘koitsu’ inferred from the placement of ga
As for the usage of ni, it’s just a case of indicating purpose of something with ni.
‘omae ha nani shi ni koko ni kita?’ = why did you come here?
Or more literally, ‘what did you come to do here?’
The first ni functions the same as your example – indicating purpose. The second is the simpler – indicating a place.
Some more examples:
watashi ha benkyou wo shi ni toshokan he itta.
Gohan tabe ni ikanai?
Shiken wo ukeru ni kanshite ha, ~~