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Japanese Grammar question.. usage of de? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6950 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 9 of 14 24 September 2010 at 5:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is how I see it, too. If you had written 「やせがまんばかりして過ごした」 the meaning would've been the same. The same way that 「自転車で帰る」 is the same is 「自転車に乗って帰る」 and 「ネットで調べた」 is the same as 「ネットを使って調べた」. The fact that we wouldn't say 「自転車です」or「ネットです」in these cases is irrelevant. We can think of the -te form (including de) as meaning 'by way of' or 'in the manner of'. When we use it with a verb, like 「自転車に乗って」, it's 'by way of using a bicycle'. When we use it with a noun, we use で as in 「自転車で」 it's 'by way of a bicycle'. In English, this would correlate to an adverbial phrase used to describe the manner of an action. (In the OP's example, it describes in what manner she sugosu'd, or spent her time.) By the way, we can think of the 'location particle' で in the same way: 「家でテレビを見た」 I watched TV at home' is, in a way, describing some aspect of the manner in which the action was done (in this case, the manner in which the TV was watched). It can be replaced, for example, by 「家でいて」'by being at home'. When you consider that で and ～て describe the manner of an action, it becomes clearer why we don't use it in cases like 「私は日アメリカにいる」and 「私は日本に行く」. (i.e. they don't describe the manner or way of being/going). But we can say, for example, 「飛行機で日本に行く」 'I'll go to Japan by airplane' or 「急いで日本に行く」'I'll hurry to Japan (lit. I'll go to Japan while hurrying'). Edited by Lucky Charms on 24 September 2010 at 6:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 14 24 September 2010 at 6:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not sure I agree with you. で in 自転車で is an instrumental particle. When you say に乗って, you simply use another particle because that is what noru requires. As for my link, here is an example: XXは営業を開始したばかりで、まだまだ他社 追いつくべきことがたくさんあるよな。 I stick to my explanation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Alptraum Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5504 days ago 19 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Mandarin, Japanese, Greek | Message 11 of 14 24 September 2010 at 8:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Juuuuuuust a little bit.. :D I think that explanation would make the most sense in this case... I have just looked it up again, and seen that explanation in there... I just didn't get it before. As for the -te form... I'm still a little at a loss as to how exactly that would translate. This isn't really helped by the fact that the sentence is incomplete and strange sounding. I understand that it is a poor exercise for anything, but I was just doing it for a bit of fun... Perhaps my description wasn't the best. However, in my case, I believe that at the level that I am at, if I were to go through a passage line by line with a rough translation and try to understand the meaning and role of every word in the sentence, that would be useful alongside normal grammar and vocab study. Thanks for the flood of responses to this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| galindo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5208 days ago 142 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Portuguese | Message 12 of 14 24 September 2010 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In that case, 'bakaride' is more like a compound with a less literal meaning, like 'tokorode.' The de itself isn't very important. It's using the 'just' meaning rather than the 'only' or 'nothing but' meanings, and usually shows up right after a time-frame related verb, like finished or commenced or ended. Like, "Having just started business, XX has still not..." There are plenty of examples of that, and it isn't at all the same usage as in the song.
If you look at the examples for -te form from Tae Kim's guide, you'll see things like 私の部屋は、きれいで、静かで、とても好き 。 There it obviously cannot be the particle de, and you can think of it as da. It's used to chain together a series of states that describe a single person or object, since otherwise they would require separate sentences. With verbs, you would see it as 食堂に行って、昼ご飯を食べて、昼寝をした 。 There the -te form is used to link a series of events. Neither of those fits the song, so that's why I don't think the -te form had anything to do with this question.
Well, I don't think it can hurt your grammar at all, so if you enjoy it go ahead. Piecing together songs is usually more fun than doing the same thing with random pieces of prose, and if you do it carefully it can be useful. It's fine as long as you remember that songs can be weird. ------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------- This whole thing reminded me of a post I saw on Languagehat's blog, on a topic about how hard Japanese is. It doesn't really have anything to do with your question, but it's somewhat で-related, and funny. "Japanese isn't all that hard. But colloquial Japanese is extremely hard. Not only do the Japanese in this case leave out 60% of the words needed to make a legitimate sentence, they also come up with completely new verb conjugations, or just forget about them all together. I once had a Japanese person say to me: "Tokorode, utsu?",(at place, play?) the thing she meant was "Ima, mou ichidou uchimashou ka?"(Now, shall we play one more?). This is such a horrible simplification of the Japanese language that it's hard to grasp." No matter how formal this guy's classes were, I find it hard to believe that they never taught him about that conjunction. It's weird that he thinks that's an example of hard colloquial Japanese, and also weird that he couldn't figure out from the way it was used that ところで meant 'by the way.' 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 13 of 14 24 September 2010 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What about: Half a year has passed by already And it's been nothing but false stoicism Apart from the fact that I reversed the 2 clauses, I see de here as "it's been... and" (which doesn't translate literally very well because of the reversed order). If you removed the second line, you'd have to change de to da or desu, or you could omit it. If it were a particle, you wouldn't be able to do either of those things.
I fail to see how that example is any different from the song example. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5784 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 14 of 14 24 September 2010 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is correct. It is not the case particle で and even if you want to think of ばかり で as an idiom, it comes from the copula. だ conjugates as follows: 未然形：だろ 連用形：だっ、で 連体形：な 終止形：だ 已然形：なら 命令形：× 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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