Hi, I recently joined this website and I'm currently working my way through RtK1. I'm also starting to do the AJATT sentences thing. I was looking at this sentence

その赤ん坊は歩くことが出来る。

And I'm wonding what the purpose of こと is.

Could this be rewritten as

その赤ん坊は歩くが出来る。

and still mean the same thing?

Also can anyone recommend a good forum for asking this kind of question? I have a feeling I'll have a lot of them and I don't want to bother you guys all the time, seeing as this site seems to be mainly about kanji learning.

Thanks!

Could this be rewritten as

その赤ん坊は歩くが出来る。

No

その赤ん坊は歩くことが出来る。

And I'm wonding what the purpose of こと is.

The "koto" nominalizes the verb. You can't directly have a verb in front of ga (at least I can't think of any examples where you would). Generally, you are going to need either "koto" or "no".

I just googled it and found this:
http://www.timwerx.net/language/jpverbs/lesson31.htm

Ahh ok, makes sense now. Thanks!

Paludis Wrote:Hi, I recently joined this website and I'm currently working my way through RtK1. I'm also starting to do the AJATT sentences thing. I was looking at this sentence

その赤ん坊は歩くことが出来る。

And I'm wonding what the purpose of こと is.

Could this be rewritten as

その赤ん坊は歩くが出来る。

and still mean the same thing?

I don't know if a native would understand that sentence. He/she may even not realize something is grammatically wrong - specially in the context of a conversation if you talk fast. Anyway, that would be grammatically incorrect.

howdycowdy pointed out a grammatically correct option. You could also just use the potential form of the verb and the meaning would be the same. I.e.: その赤ん坊は歩ける。

Quote:Also can anyone recommend a good forum for asking this kind of question? I have a feeling I'll have a lot of them and I don't want to bother you guys all the time, seeing as this site seems to be mainly about kanji learning.

Thanks!

Check Jgram . Sometimes some examples aren't the best, but in my opinion the site can be pretty useful, specially the comments.

With regards to the site that howdycowdy posted... well, it kind of seems like the site is trying to say that you need to use ことができる to make it "can" or "to be able to". But it seems kind of silly, as Transtic said, to do that when you can just use the potential form of the verb.

Basically, the meaning is the same, but ことができる is a bit more formal.

It's good to know, because it allows you to have more variety in your speaking/writing (instead of always using the same one), and again, is a bit more formal.

When in doubt, longer == more formal is a safe bet.

And if you don't already own the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, I *HIGHLY* suggest you pick them up. Well worth the investment, and a great deal more reliable and well written than j-gram.

I always use ことが出来る when I can't remember how to conjugate the potential on the spot