Postby thegooseking » January 31st, 2016 1:58 pm
Shaydwyrm-san,
I'll admit I'm a little out of my depth here, but this is my read on it.
The first case is a bit confusing, but I think the key is that we're talking about where he is located, not where he lives (although it seems to be implied that he also lives there). It's true that we normally use いる for animates and ある for inanimates, but that's because いる means more "to actively be" and ある means more "to passively be" (the distinction between "active being" and "passive being" is quite a fundamental concept in Buddhism, and therefore in Buddhist-influenced Japan). I think, in this introduction, we're talking about his passive existence in this location, not what he's doing there.
In the second case, I think the ある is referring to the circumstance of the child crying, not the child itself, if you see what I mean. Unlike いる, ある can also mean "to happen" (after all, people don't 'happen' but things do). あること can therefore mean "the thing that happens", so it's like, "I did not notice the thing that was happening".
I think in the third case, we're being a bit more abstract: We're not really talking about horrible-demon-like humans actively existing, but we're saying that their existence is a thing, and because it's a thing, we use ある. Again, we're sort of talking about passive existence more than active existence.
I could be wrong about any of these, though, so if anyone wants to correct me, that'd be great.
小狼
