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The sentence

それは見てないな。

apparently translates to

I haven't seen that.

According to jpdb.io the word 見てないな is the "て-form negative" conjugation.

Does this mean 見てない is actually just short/slang for

見てあらない

and the literal translation of the original sentence is something like

As for that, I am not seeing.

?

George
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    It’s a colloquial form of 見ていない, but `[V て-form]-いる` doesn’t always correspond to the progressive aspect in English. – aguijonazo Aug 04 '22 at 07:36
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    RE "but [V て-form]-いる doesn’t always correspond to the progressive aspect in English": can you expand upon this for this example? – George Aug 04 '22 at 08:36
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    @George Afaik, here the form of テ形 ＋いる is showing that the speaker hasn't seen it, and that this is still an on-going state (i.e. at the current time, he is in the state of not having seen it). – Basil Aug 04 '22 at 09:16
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    @George [V て-form]-いる sometimes correspond to present perfect (though I won't insist on that) and sometimes not even that. It depends on the verb. Common examples: 結婚[けっこん]している is just "is married", not "marrying" and 知[し]っている is just "[I] know" – Yaroslav Fyodorov Aug 04 '22 at 14:03
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    あらない is not a valid verb form. – jogloran Aug 04 '22 at 19:49
  • @YaroslavFyodorov So in those special cases what's the difference between [V て-form]-いる and just present tense? For example what is the difference between 知[し]っている and just 知る? – George Aug 04 '22 at 22:22
  • See this for that: [For 知る what is the difference between the simple present (知る) and 知っている forms?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/36928/43676) – aguijonazo Aug 05 '22 at 02:29

2 Answers2

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In the present progressive (て + いる), the い is often dropped. Thus, 見てない = 見ていない (short form of 見ていません)! :)

molly
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It’s a colloquial form of 見ていない, which is the plain negative form of 見ている, which in turn is a result of combining 見る (“to see”) and いる (“to be”) in the [V て-form]-いる construction. This could mean, depending on the context, either you do the “seeing” and “being” at the same time (“be seeing”) or you “see” and then “be” in a state that results from that “seeing.” The latter may be translated with the present perfect (“have seen”) in English. 見てない in your example is the negative of this. You are not in a state of having done the "seeing."

That’s if you have to dissect it.

aguijonazo
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