Ok, thanks for clearing that up, thought it'd be a form of する....but didn't see it on Tae Kim or anywhere else.

Is it the kind of thing you come across often? I'm not sure about its particular nuances and why it's used here instead of して.

From Denshi Jisho:
為       す      to do (literary form of suru)

Last edited by kame3 (2010 February 12, 3:32 pm)

Technically it's relevant because the form is, from a grammatical standpoint the 連用形 of the classical form, rather than the "-te form minus -te", but from the standpoint of somebody learning modern Japanese that doesn't matter at all and it's much better just to learn it as "-te form minus -te".

I meant "-masu form minus -masu", sorry.

awesome, thanks for the helpful replies!

that random google books textbook has some good explanations of it and i guess i'll see this kind of thing with more exposure.

yudantaiteki wrote:

Technically [...], but from the standpoint of somebody learning modern Japanese that doesn't matter at all

J7 wrote:

Technically [...]

hmm

johnlugh wrote:

Is it the kind of thing you come across often?

You see it all the time in literature, not only with する, but with any verb.
Random line from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu:

    俺も前を向き、他の連中も前を向き、岡部教諭はよたよたと壇上に登り、咳払いを一つ。

I don't think it's just a matter of formalism, though, because you can often see authors using both forms in the same paragraph. For example:

    教室に入ると涼宮ハルヒはとっくに俺の後ろの席で涼しい顔を窓の外に向けていて、今日は頭に二つドアノブを付けているようなダンゴ頭で、それで俺は、ああ今日は二ヶ所だから水曜日かと認識して椅子に座り、そして何か魔が差してしまったんだろう。

If I had to explain it, I'd say it's because using too many 連用形-て reads something like "and then ... and then ... and then ...", which is a common speech pattern, but not that polished. Very often you can either find a better conjunction to join together the sentences (like そして in the second example) or omit the conjunction altogether if the sentences are not that closely related either temporally or logically (as in the first example; everything happened at the same time, not sequentially).

But, of course, this is just a wild guess, and may be totally wrong.

Last edited by iSoron (2010 February 13, 6:15 am)