言わない referring to the past

[quiver]

Hi there, I found this sentence in A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (no context available):

よし江ったら私には何も言わないのよ。They translate it as "Yoshie didn't tell me anything, you know".

I am not familiar with verbs in their negative non-past form (言わない) being used to describe a past action (or perhaps I should say, lack thereof). The closest thing I can think of is forms like まだ... 言っていない. In the sencence in question, however, the ている / ていない form is not used.

Could you please explain in what circumstances this usage is allowed? Further example sentences would also be appreciated

 

[SoLaTiDoberman]

My translations for "よし江ったら私には何も言わないのよ。" are:
"Yoshie never tells me anything, you know"
or
"Yoshie won't tell me anything, you know."

The speaker thinks that there is a (strong) intention of Yoshie not to say anything to her (=the speaker).

Regarding the tense, I think it's a very difficult matter.
"Yoshie didn't tell me anything, you know" and "Yoshie hasn't told me anything, you know" might not be completely wrong because "not-telling-anything-to-the-speaker by Yoshie" is really the past fact, as well as now.
But it would be expected in the future as well, like a kind of "permanent fact" of her, which can be expressed in the present tense in English.
And her (strong intention) can be described as "won't," which might be regarded as a kind of "future" tense in English, although the Japanese language doesn't have the future tense.
It depends on how the speaker is actually thinking.

"よし江ったら私には何も言ってないのよ。"
This sentence is referring to the past, or more like the present perfect tense because the speaker doesn't know if Yoshie will speak to her in the future or not.

"よし江ったら私には何も言わなかったのよ。"
This is it! I think this is the proper one for the translation: "Yoshie didn't tell me anything, you know".

In short, if you want to be keen on the tense, you may think that the translation was just wrong, technically speaking.

 

[gengo]

よし江ったら私には何も言わないのよ。They translate it as "Yoshie didn't tell me anything, you know".

I agree with Sola that that is not a very good translation for a dictionary example. That is, without context, it has to mean "never tells me anything," etc. That said, I can imagine someone saying this to refer to moment in the past, if the context makes clear the intended meaning.

Ex.
-おにぎり作ったの？
-えっ、おにぎりって？
-よし江に、おにぎりを作るよう頼まれたじゃない。
-よし江ったら私には何も言わないのよ。

Here, although the past tense would be the more correct form, I think the sentence is perfectly understandable.

 

[quiver]

@SoLaTiDoberman -san, @gengo -san, thank you. So the sentence is a statement about Yoshie's usual behavior, and, in the right context, it could be an indirect way to refer to (and complain about) a specific episode where Yoshie didn't say anything. Then, I agree that the translation is a bit misleading.