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Here are an example sentence and its translation taken from an online English-Japanese dictionary.

問題の意味するところ
the meaning of a question

I'm wondering why the example sentence attach するところ and doesn't simply say 問題の意味.

Although there is a grammar that [verb] + ところ means is about to [verb], that grammar can't seem to be applied at here.

Ian Y.
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    Related: http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/2968/7810, http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/23738/7810, http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/32683/7810, http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/24759/7810, http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/6517/7810, http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/21795/7810 – broccoli forest Jun 22 '16 at 07:55

1 Answers1

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ところ has many meanings. This ところ means "thing, content". http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/jn/158611/meaning/m0u/%E3%81%A8%E3%81%93%E3%82%8D/

So 問題の意味するところ is same as 問題の意味すること. Of course, 問題の意味 make sense but if 問題の意味する, the word like こと or ところ is needed because 問題の意味する is a modification phrase so a modified word is needed like that.

It is probably "what a question means" in English.

Yuuichi Tam
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  • So it looks like the するところ at here does not mean anything special. I guess the author of the example sentence was just bored and added the redundant するところ in order to kill some time. – Ian Y. Jun 22 '16 at 10:24