〜ている vs 〜た: Result State vs Event | Japanese Grammar

English has one form, "I have married," that quietly does two jobs: it names the event (a wedding happened) and asserts the present result (I am now in a married state). Japanese refuses to blur them. It uses 〜た for the event — 結婚した "got married" — and 〜ている for the standing result — 結婚している "am married." Because English fuses the two, learners map the perfect onto whichever Japanese form comes to mind, and get it wrong about half the time. This page is about pulling event and result back apart.

兄は去年結婚した。

ani wa kyonen kekkon shita

My older brother got married last year. (the event)

兄は結婚しているよ。

ani wa kekkon shite iru yo

My older brother is married. (the state, now)

The core split: event vs result

Line up the two Japanese forms against the one English perfect and the division of labor is stark:

English	Japanese: event (〜た)	Japanese: result (〜ている)
marry	結婚した — got married	結婚している — is married
lose (a wallet)	財布を落とした — dropped my wallet	財布を落としている — my wallet is lost
fall (a tree)	木が倒れた — a tree fell	木が倒れている — a tree is down
arrive	電車が着いた — the train arrived	電車が着いている — the train is (already) here
die	死んだ — died	死んでいる — is dead

The mental model: 〜た points at the moment of change — the instant the event fired and completed. 〜ている points at the state left behind by that change, holding in the present. 死んだ is the moment of death; 死んでいる is the ongoing condition of being dead. They describe the same real-world happening from opposite ends.

財布を落とした！どこかで落としたに違いない。

saifu o otoshita! dokoka de otoshita ni chigainai

I dropped my wallet! I must have dropped it somewhere. (the event)

財布を落としているので、今、手元にお金がない。

saifu o otoshite iru node, ima, temoto ni okane ga nai

My wallet is lost, so I have no money on me right now. (the resulting state)

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For change-of-state verbs: 〜た = the event fired (and it's over), 〜ている = the result of that event is still holding. English "have + participle" collapses the two — Japanese keeps them apart.

The flagship error: 結婚しました for "I'm married"

This is the mistake nearly every English speaker makes. Asked if you're married, you reach for the polite past 結婚しました because "have married" feels past-ish. But 結婚しました reports the wedding as a completed event — and with no time expression it sounds like it just happened, as if you got married last week.

はい、結婚しています。子供も二人います。

hai, kekkon shite imasu. kodomo mo futari imasu

Yes, I'm married. I have two kids as well.

If you want to say "I am married" — describing your current status — it is 結婚しています, the resultant state. Save 結婚しました for actually narrating the event: 先月結婚しました "I got married last month."

先月、二人は結婚しました。

sengetsu, futari wa kekkon shimashita

The two of them got married last month. (narrating the event)

The same logic runs through a whole family of status verbs:

彼のことはよく知っている。

kare no koto wa yoku shitte iru

I know him well. (state — 知った would mean 'found out')

約束は今でも覚えている。

yakusoku wa ima demo oboete iru

I still remember the promise. (state — 覚えた would mean 'memorized it')

知っている ("know") vs 知った ("found out"), 覚えている ("remember") vs 覚えた ("memorized"): in each pair, ている is the standing state and た is the event that produced it.

Duration lives with the state, not the event

A tell-tale case: "I have lived here for ten years." English uses the present perfect, so learners produce the past 住みました — which is wrong. Living here is an ongoing state, so it takes 〜ている. The past 住みました would mean "I lived here (and no longer do)."

この町に十年住んでいます。

kono machi ni jūnen sunde imasu

I've lived in this town for ten years. (and still do)

子供の頃、大阪に住んでいました。

kodomo no koro, Ōsaka ni sunde imashita

I lived in Osaka as a child. (past state — I don't anymore)

Note the second sentence: 住んでいました (past of ている) is the right way to say "used to live" — a state that held in the past. The bare past 住みました is far rarer and points at the moment of moving in. Duration expressions ("for ten years," "since 2010") almost always want the ている state, present or past.

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"Have + been + -ing / have lived / have known" for a stretch of time = the 〜ている state (十年住んでいます), never the plain past. The plain past 住みました means the living happened and ended.

Not every verb works this way — mind the verb type

Here is the crucial refinement that keeps you from over-applying the rule. The "ている = result" mapping holds only for change-of-state verbs (結婚する, 死ぬ, 落とす, 倒れる, 着く, 住む, 知る) — verbs that name an instantaneous switch from one state to another. With activity verbs (食べる, 読む, 飲む, 走る) that unfold over time, 〜ている means the action in progress, not a result:

今、ご飯を食べている。

ima, gohan o tabete iru

I'm eating right now. (in progress — NOT 'have eaten')

So how do you say "I have (already) eaten" for an activity verb? With もう〜た: もう食べた. For activity verbs, the "perfect" sense of completion is carried by 〜た, and 〜ている is reserved for the live action.

お昼はもう食べた。だから今は大丈夫。

ohiru wa mō tabeta. dakara ima wa daijōbu

I've already had lunch, so I'm fine for now.

There is a neat asymmetry hiding here, and it connects two forms. For an activity verb the positive perfect is もう食べた (た), but the negative perfect is まだ食べていない (ている) — "haven't eaten yet." "Have you eaten?" is もう食べた？, and "not yet" is まだ食べていない, never 食べなかった. That negative-perfect ていない is its own topic on 〜ていない: 'has not (yet) happened'.

An honest complication: 疲れた, お腹がすいた

Not everything is tidy. A handful of change-of-state verbs about bodily and emotional states use the plain past 〜た to describe a present feeling, where you might expect ている. "I'm tired" is most naturally 疲れた (literally "got tired"), and "I'm hungry" is お腹がすいた ("belly got empty") — the た form, right now.

ああ、疲れた。今日はもう寝る。

ā, tsukareta. kyō wa mō neru

Ugh, I'm tired. I'm going to bed now.

お腹すいた。何か食べに行かない？

onaka suita. nanika tabe ni ikanai

I'm hungry. Want to go grab something to eat?

疲れている and お腹がすいている do exist and are grammatical (more descriptive, often about someone else: 彼は疲れている "he's tired"), but for your own here-and-now feeling, 疲れた and お腹がすいた are what natives say. There's no deep logic to memorize — treat these high-frequency feeling-verbs as a small set where た doubles as the present state, and let the general rule govern everything else.

Common mistakes

❌ はい、結婚しました。（現在の状態として）

Incorrect for 'I am married' — 結婚しました reports the wedding event and sounds like it just happened. Use the state 結婚しています.

✅ はい、結婚しています。

hai, kekkon shite imasu

Yes, I'm married.

❌ 私はこの町に十年住みました。

Incorrect if you still live there — 住みました means the living happened and is over. A continuing residence is 住んでいます.

✅ 私はこの町に十年住んでいます。

watashi wa kono machi ni jūnen sunde imasu

I've lived in this town for ten years.

❌ もうお昼を食べている。

Incorrect for 'I've already eaten' — 食べている is 'am eating (in progress)'. Completed eating is もう食べた.

✅ もうお昼を食べた。

mō ohiru o tabeta

I've already had lunch.

❌ 木が倒れた（今も倒れたままの様子を指して）。

Incorrect if you mean the tree is currently down — 倒れた is the moment it fell. The lying-there result is 倒れている.

✅ 道に木が倒れている。

michi ni ki ga taorete iru

A tree is down across the road.

The single reflex behind all of these: mapping the English perfect onto the wrong Japanese aspect. Ask yourself whether you mean the event that happened (→ 〜た) or the state that's true now (→ 〜ている). For change-of-state verbs that one question resolves it.

Key takeaways

English "have + participle" fuses event and result; Japanese splits them: 〜た = event, 〜ている = resultant state.
This split applies to change-of-state verbs (結婚する, 死ぬ, 落とす, 着く, 住む, 知る). "I'm married" = 結婚している, not 結婚しました.
Duration ("for ten years," "since…") rides with the state: 十年住んでいます, never 住みました.
For activity verbs (食べる, 読む), 〜ている is the action in progress; their "already done" perfect is もう〜た, and the "not yet" is まだ〜ていない.
A small exception set — 疲れた, お腹がすいた — uses 〜た for a present feeling; memorize these rather than fight them.

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