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I have this sentence in my JLPT exercise book:

彼{かれ}は有名人{ゆうめいじん}ゆえの不自由{ふじゆう}さから逃{に}げたくなった。

The translation offered is:

He wanted to get away from the difficulties of being a celebrity.

What is throwing me is the 逃{に}げたくなった part. It seems to me that the past tense form of "wanted to get away" should be 逃{に}げたかった, and the past tense form of "did not want to get away" should be 逃{に}げたくなかった. I feel the English translation probably represents the intended meaning, because it would be weird to not want to get away from difficulties, but on the other hand my own translation of the original Japanese is something along the lines that he did not want to escape.

So what is 逃{に}げたくなった? Am I wrong about the verb forms I think it should be, or is something else going on here?

Questioner
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    In Japanese, なる is sometimes lightly used where φ/ある can be used, to add some additional meaning. Are you confusing 逃げたく **な** った with 逃げたく **なか** った? – Yang Muye May 27 '14 at 03:48
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    @YangMuye What does "φ" mean here? – senshin May 27 '14 at 03:49
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    @senshin, I meant to type ∅ “ゼロ”. Because a redundant ある is often ungrammatical, it is often deleted. うれしくなった→○うれしい ×うれしくある, 好きになった→○好きだ ○好きである. ある is only possible in certain conditions, such as つよくあれ, つよくあるべき, etc. – Yang Muye May 27 '14 at 04:03
  • Both answers capture it precisely. It's a fairly standard construction that's just a bit difficult to capture in a natural translation at times. – Kaji May 27 '14 at 04:12
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    @Kaji, Now that it's pointed out, I feel a bit embarrassed for not having realized that it involves `なる`. Now the problem is, both answers are exactly right and similar... not sure which to mark as correct. I'd like to give both a green check. – Questioner May 27 '14 at 04:18
  • @DaveMG Since there's no way to split the difference, I'd probably give it to senshin since he got it first by a few seconds, and also has the lower rep as well. – Kaji May 27 '14 at 04:19
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    @Kaji, Might go to Senshin just for the rep boost, but I wouldn't really want to reward people being faster. I think that getting points for being faster encourages people to place low quality answers in the hopes of getting in ahead of others. – Questioner May 27 '14 at 04:23
  • @DaveMG Agreed. Only reason I factored speed in was because the answers were more or less identical in the first place. If there was a clearly superior one then there wouldn't be this discussion. – Kaji May 27 '14 at 07:01
  • @Kaji, yeah, we're in total agreement there. I'm now noticing that there does seem to be a difference in how the community is voting for the answers, and I think I might let that be the deciding factor. I'm personally of the opinion that both answers are straight up equal, but if for whatever reason one gets more votes, it seems to be a decent tie-breaker. – Questioner May 27 '14 at 07:51
  • @DaveMG Probably the way to go. If this were a more active SE site, I'd say go reverse and give someone a shot at the Populist badge, but 10 votes period is an amazing feat on this site, never mind 20+... – Kaji May 27 '14 at 07:59
  • Actually I posted my answer at 03:46:45, and the other poster posted at 03:47:07 which was about 20 seconds later than me, but I'm deleting my answer to avoid any further confusion (also because I know that you both have enough rep to see my deleted answer anyway.) –  May 27 '14 at 08:40
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    @Chocolate, please consider leaving your answer up. Part of the requirement that makes a site go from Beta mode to fully fledged is to have multiple quality answers to every question. The goal isn't to just have one perfect answer for everything, the goal is to have multiple approaches. – Questioner May 27 '14 at 12:17
  • The SAD strikes again. – Questioner May 27 '14 at 12:18
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    @Chocolate Dave's right. Plus, answers from native speakers are always great! – senshin May 27 '14 at 12:36

2 Answers2

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逃げたくなった is:

  • 逃げる = "to flee", in its stem form (連用形) → 逃げ
  • ～たい = the suffix that expresses wanting to do, conjugated to ～たく (again, the 連用形)
  • なる = "to become", in past tense → なった

So this means something to the effect of "it became the case that he wanted to get away".

For the sentence as a whole, I would offer a translation like "he began to want to get away from the difficulties of being a celebrity".

For "he did not want to get away", you would indeed use 逃げたくなかった.

senshin
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逃げたくなった is the past tense form of 逃げ+たく+なる which consists of 動詞「逃げる」 + 助動詞「たい」 + 動詞「なる」.

逃げ >> 連用形(continuative form) of 逃げる >> run away
たく >> 連用形(continuative form) of the volitional たい >> want to
なった >> the past tense form of なる(成る) >> become

So it's like "became to want to run away", i.e. "started to feel like running away".