I did casual googling to see how nonnative speakers are learning Japanese. And it seems quite a few people get confused when they run into the grammar point called 連用中止 when it is quite simple and easy if you learn it properly. (連用中止 is the weird structure which can look as if a sentence ended in the middle of a thought like 過去の忘れ物風に乗せ (taken from thurd's question))
Unfortunately it seems pretty much every modern Japanese textbook for nonnative speakers takes too simplistic an approach so sometimes things look harder than they should. In fact, this grammar point has been the topic of several posts in this forum too.
So here is an unconventional explanation of 連用中止 tailored for nonnative Japanese speakers who learned something along the line of te-form and masu-form instead of more standard grammar like 連用形. We'll see what's going on in sentences with 連用中止 and its variants plus why it is considered te-from when it looks exactly like the stem of masu-form.
We begin with a simple sentence with a verb of the vanilla te-form.
漢字を覚えて日本語をマスターするぞ。
(I'm gonna learn kanji and be a master of Japanese!)
As you probably already know, the function of this te-form is to connect two clauses (漢字を覚える and 日本語をマスターする). Most of the time, it indicates a sequence of actions, i.e., one action happens after the other. In this sentence, "learn kanji" precedes "master Japanese." It can also imply a stronger relation than the simple chronological relation. So this sentence might imply that learning kanji is key to native fluency, that learning kanji is the last step in your Japanese learning journey, etc. depending on context.
You can give a looser, lazier, and more informal tone to this sentence by stretching out the particle て:
漢字を覚えてぇー、日本語をマスターする…… かも？
(I think I'll learn the kanji thing, and, you know, master Japanese?)
Actually you can apply this technique to any particle at the end of a meaning chunk. Often native speakers do this when they're looking for words. It works like throwing in filler words such as "like" and "um" in English. So the extreme case is:
漢字をー、覚えてぇー、日本語をー、マスターするぅー…… かも？
This technique (Is it?) is so rampant you can easily learn how to intone the prolonged particles. Just listen to real, unscripted conversations carefully, and you'll soon get the hang of it. The thing is that excessive use of prolonged particles makes you sound like an airhead. And you might want to completely avoid this in formal speech.
Ah, I almost forgot. I said you can do this for any particle. But don't do this at the real end of your sentence. It might make you look something beyond an airhead.
So, when it comes to the te-form we're using in the above examples, there is an opposite technique too. You don't stretch て out. Instead, you skip it. Often you make a pause at the point where て was. It's like silent remnants. So 漢字を覚えて日本語をマスターする becomes
漢字を覚え、日本語をマスターする。
This way, you sound more crisp, concise, and formal than the standard 漢字を覚えて version. You'll come across this more often in written language than spoken language. The meaning is pretty much the same as the basic te-form version. It's much less colloquial and more succinct. The implied relation between the two actions usually becomes weaker, so the simple time-wise sequence is the most likely connotation.
This kind of omission (or reverse filler like an antonym for "like," "you know," etc.) is the 連用中止 I was talking about at the beginning of this post. This is a handy technique in writing when you want to keep your argument vague but still sound like a smart guy! ... anyway, clever use of te-form for a stronger implication and 連用中止 for a weaker relation is key to good writing.
Now you have mastered the handy sentence connection by te-form and its informal, airhead version and formal, pretentious version... almost. Why almost? Because te-form isn't real in the first place.
The verb form we've been using here is called 連用形 in standard terminology. Roughly speaking (and very rough indeed), it's the conjugated form you use when the verb modifies a grammatical portion called 用言. て is a canonical particle you use to make your verb modify 用言 (hence the term "te-form," I guess). So, usually it's the same as the te-form you learn.
The thing is that, just like any other language, Japanese also has kind of slurred pronunciation like "kind of -> kinda." And some slurred versions have completely replaced official ones such as 書きて -> 書いて. This is the 音便 you may or may not have heard of (Well, it's not exactly correct to say 音便 is lazy pronunciation. But pretty much.).
To focus on 連用中止, we don't go into the rules of 音便 here. But that's ok. We've got a fake but quite handy workaround: Make believe 連用中止 uses the stem of masu-form! You can always get the non-slurred version of 連用形 for any verb this way. It's that simple. So, for example, if you want to apply 連用中止 to the verb 書く, you use 書き because you say 書きます. Here is an example:
黒板に難しい漢字を書き、日本語をマスターしているかのように振る舞った。
(I wrote some complicated kanji on the blackboard and pretended I was a pro when it came to Japanese.)
Because this is originally 連用形+て (or te-form), it's almost the same as:
黒板に難しい漢字を書いて日本語をマスターしている振りをした。
So, was 書いて really the same as 書きて? Yes. But if you say 漢字を書きて、日本語を..., you sound like a samurai from a few hundred years ago.
But then, why should I use the proper pronunciation here? Well, maybe you find it easier to swallow this if you consider a similar phenomenon in English. (Warning: I'm not a native English speaker, so the following explanation may be doggy!)
In many dialects of English, the combination of verb "want" and preposition "to" is often pronounced more like "wanna" than "wan two." The 音便 happening to 連用形 was sort of like this kind of lazy pronunciation having a longer history, I think. (Ask a 500 year old guy if this is true.) So 書きて, 言いて, etc. were the correct forms, but as time passes, people started pronouncing them 書いて (skipping the second "k" before "i"), 言って (skipping the second "i" while kind of swallowing the next "t"), etc. And because this type of 音便 has a long history, nowadays it can sound ridiculous to use the proper versions any more.
But as the name of 連用中止 suggests, this te-form without te (!) we just learned always appears at the end of a complete clause. So, 漢字を書き、日本語をマスターしたかのように振る舞った is a combination of two clauses: 漢字を書いた + 日本語をマスターしたかのように振る舞った.
What happens when "want to" appears at the end of a clause because you omitted the following action part? For example:
"But I don't want to!"
Is "want to" pronounced "wanna" or "wan two"? I think you probably always use the proper, non-shortened version if it's at the end of a clause.
The pronunciation change in 連用中止 is pretty much the same. It's always at the end of a complete clause (often with a pause even), so the proper version shows up. It's just 漢字を書きて, 日本語を読みて etc. are sooooo proper that they remind of Japanese of the samurai and ninja era or even older language.
Thou shalt not use the proper version except for 連用中止, for thou wouldst come across as a foreigner who believes samurais are still out there in Japan.
You use masu-form for 連用中止. But the meaning is like a formal version of te-form because it's actually te-form at its core. Now you mastered 連用中止.
Here's a little exercise:
What's the 連用中止 version of the following sentence?
今オーバードライブさせて羽ばたくのさ。 (This is taken from the lyrics thurd posted.)
Yes. You only need to use the stem of masu-form. So the answer is
今オーバードライブさせ、羽ばたくのさ。
The translation of this line is something like "It's about time we went into overdrive and took off!"
This is the first thread I started here, and probably the longest single post I've ever made...
Unfortunately it seems pretty much every modern Japanese textbook for nonnative speakers takes too simplistic an approach so sometimes things look harder than they should. In fact, this grammar point has been the topic of several posts in this forum too.
So here is an unconventional explanation of 連用中止 tailored for nonnative Japanese speakers who learned something along the line of te-form and masu-form instead of more standard grammar like 連用形. We'll see what's going on in sentences with 連用中止 and its variants plus why it is considered te-from when it looks exactly like the stem of masu-form.
We begin with a simple sentence with a verb of the vanilla te-form.
漢字を覚えて日本語をマスターするぞ。
(I'm gonna learn kanji and be a master of Japanese!)
As you probably already know, the function of this te-form is to connect two clauses (漢字を覚える and 日本語をマスターする). Most of the time, it indicates a sequence of actions, i.e., one action happens after the other. In this sentence, "learn kanji" precedes "master Japanese." It can also imply a stronger relation than the simple chronological relation. So this sentence might imply that learning kanji is key to native fluency, that learning kanji is the last step in your Japanese learning journey, etc. depending on context.
You can give a looser, lazier, and more informal tone to this sentence by stretching out the particle て:
漢字を覚えてぇー、日本語をマスターする…… かも？
(I think I'll learn the kanji thing, and, you know, master Japanese?)
Actually you can apply this technique to any particle at the end of a meaning chunk. Often native speakers do this when they're looking for words. It works like throwing in filler words such as "like" and "um" in English. So the extreme case is:
漢字をー、覚えてぇー、日本語をー、マスターするぅー…… かも？
This technique (Is it?) is so rampant you can easily learn how to intone the prolonged particles. Just listen to real, unscripted conversations carefully, and you'll soon get the hang of it. The thing is that excessive use of prolonged particles makes you sound like an airhead. And you might want to completely avoid this in formal speech.
Ah, I almost forgot. I said you can do this for any particle. But don't do this at the real end of your sentence. It might make you look something beyond an airhead.
So, when it comes to the te-form we're using in the above examples, there is an opposite technique too. You don't stretch て out. Instead, you skip it. Often you make a pause at the point where て was. It's like silent remnants. So 漢字を覚えて日本語をマスターする becomes
漢字を覚え、日本語をマスターする。
This way, you sound more crisp, concise, and formal than the standard 漢字を覚えて version. You'll come across this more often in written language than spoken language. The meaning is pretty much the same as the basic te-form version. It's much less colloquial and more succinct. The implied relation between the two actions usually becomes weaker, so the simple time-wise sequence is the most likely connotation.
This kind of omission (or reverse filler like an antonym for "like," "you know," etc.) is the 連用中止 I was talking about at the beginning of this post. This is a handy technique in writing when you want to keep your argument vague but still sound like a smart guy! ... anyway, clever use of te-form for a stronger implication and 連用中止 for a weaker relation is key to good writing.
Now you have mastered the handy sentence connection by te-form and its informal, airhead version and formal, pretentious version... almost. Why almost? Because te-form isn't real in the first place.
The verb form we've been using here is called 連用形 in standard terminology. Roughly speaking (and very rough indeed), it's the conjugated form you use when the verb modifies a grammatical portion called 用言. て is a canonical particle you use to make your verb modify 用言 (hence the term "te-form," I guess). So, usually it's the same as the te-form you learn.
The thing is that, just like any other language, Japanese also has kind of slurred pronunciation like "kind of -> kinda." And some slurred versions have completely replaced official ones such as 書きて -> 書いて. This is the 音便 you may or may not have heard of (Well, it's not exactly correct to say 音便 is lazy pronunciation. But pretty much.).
To focus on 連用中止, we don't go into the rules of 音便 here. But that's ok. We've got a fake but quite handy workaround: Make believe 連用中止 uses the stem of masu-form! You can always get the non-slurred version of 連用形 for any verb this way. It's that simple. So, for example, if you want to apply 連用中止 to the verb 書く, you use 書き because you say 書きます. Here is an example:
黒板に難しい漢字を書き、日本語をマスターしているかのように振る舞った。
(I wrote some complicated kanji on the blackboard and pretended I was a pro when it came to Japanese.)
Because this is originally 連用形+て (or te-form), it's almost the same as:
黒板に難しい漢字を書いて日本語をマスターしている振りをした。
So, was 書いて really the same as 書きて? Yes. But if you say 漢字を書きて、日本語を..., you sound like a samurai from a few hundred years ago.
But then, why should I use the proper pronunciation here? Well, maybe you find it easier to swallow this if you consider a similar phenomenon in English. (Warning: I'm not a native English speaker, so the following explanation may be doggy!)
In many dialects of English, the combination of verb "want" and preposition "to" is often pronounced more like "wanna" than "wan two." The 音便 happening to 連用形 was sort of like this kind of lazy pronunciation having a longer history, I think. (Ask a 500 year old guy if this is true.) So 書きて, 言いて, etc. were the correct forms, but as time passes, people started pronouncing them 書いて (skipping the second "k" before "i"), 言って (skipping the second "i" while kind of swallowing the next "t"), etc. And because this type of 音便 has a long history, nowadays it can sound ridiculous to use the proper versions any more.
But as the name of 連用中止 suggests, this te-form without te (!) we just learned always appears at the end of a complete clause. So, 漢字を書き、日本語をマスターしたかのように振る舞った is a combination of two clauses: 漢字を書いた + 日本語をマスターしたかのように振る舞った.
What happens when "want to" appears at the end of a clause because you omitted the following action part? For example:
"But I don't want to!"
Is "want to" pronounced "wanna" or "wan two"? I think you probably always use the proper, non-shortened version if it's at the end of a clause.
The pronunciation change in 連用中止 is pretty much the same. It's always at the end of a complete clause (often with a pause even), so the proper version shows up. It's just 漢字を書きて, 日本語を読みて etc. are sooooo proper that they remind of Japanese of the samurai and ninja era or even older language.
Thou shalt not use the proper version except for 連用中止, for thou wouldst come across as a foreigner who believes samurais are still out there in Japan.
You use masu-form for 連用中止. But the meaning is like a formal version of te-form because it's actually te-form at its core. Now you mastered 連用中止.
Here's a little exercise:
What's the 連用中止 version of the following sentence?
今オーバードライブさせて羽ばたくのさ。 (This is taken from the lyrics thurd posted.)
Yes. You only need to use the stem of masu-form. So the answer is
今オーバードライブさせ、羽ばたくのさ。
The translation of this line is something like "It's about time we went into overdrive and took off!"
This is the first thread I started here, and probably the longest single post I've ever made...
