-te forms of verbs?

elvenscout742

Anyone know how to use these? Or know where I could find out?

Lantis

D'you want the short, easy version or the long, complicated version?

elvenscout742

Ooh, long and complicated, please !

Lantis

Basics:

1) Links sentences.
本屋に行って、本を買った
hon'ya ni itte, hon o kaita
I went to the shop and bought a book.

2a) Tag -iru on to make present progressive. (-ing)
本を読んでいる
hon o yondeiru
I'm reading a book.

2b) Tag -iru on to describe a state
私は生きている
watashi wa ikiteiru
I'm alive (lit. I am living)

2a and 2b use the same form, but telling the difference is pretty much common sense. And there's some verbs that require that form.

3) Tag kara on to connect sentences in sequence.
帰ってから、新しい本を読んだ
kaette kara, hon o yonda
After coming home, I read a book.


There's plenty of other things you can do with -te, but those are the mainly used ones.

Complicated:
(AKA Annoyingly Long And Overcomplicated)

(Note: This is copied+pasted from a Japanese grammar board I posted it on before, where someone asked about the advanced mechanics of the -te iru form. And yes, it's my work, not plagiarized. :P)

I like to think of the -te form as describing a solid state or idea.

Like...
aruku - to walk
aruite - the state of "walk", or the idea of "walk".

And since iru is to exist...
aruite iru - existing in this state of "walk", so you're walking.

But if you want to say "I'm hungry", the way you'd say it is "My stomach is empty". This becomes "onaka ga suite iru".
If you took "-te iru" as a continuous form there, like most do, it'd mean "My stomach is being empty", which makes little sense.
But, if you see it as a state, then:
suite = the state/idea of "be empty"
suite iru = being in the state of "be empty"
onaka ga suite iru = stomach is being in the state of "be empty", so it's empty.



(Post asking about -te as a conjunction)


Yeah, when it's used as a conjunction, the way I see it is...

Example: "eki ni itte, densha ni noru"

"densha ni noru" is a regular sentence, the proper long form being something like "watashi wa densha ni noru". But the "watashi wa" is just implied, as is usually done.

"eki ni itte" = the state of "go to the station". It's not an action, nobody's doing it, it's just a state, the idea.

But when you put in "densha ni noru", the verb "noru" is present tense and the implied subject is "watashi".
So that part of the sentence is taking the state "go to the station" and anchoring it into the present, thereby making it an action of the implied subject "I".

It's like you're stacking one or more states with -te, then using a subject and a verb with a tense to bring them down from being an all-encompassing state/idea into a single form which agrees with the subject and tense.


For simplicity:
There's this great and powerful genie called Itte.
It is, at the same time, anything and everything, it can become whatever it wants. It has no limits, it encompasses everything.
One day, it finds a little 8-year-old girl called Noru, and decides to grant her a wish.
She has only one wish: to have someone like herself to play with.
It asks if she's sure, since it can be anything in the world.
She says that it's the only thing she wants.
It grants her wish, by becoming an 8-year-old girl itself.
Now Noru has an 8-year-old girl like herself to play with, and she's happy.


See? -te verbs take on the characteristics of whatever the main verb of the sentence are, because those main verbs only want the -te verb to be like itself.
(Oh, and the exact same applies to -te forms of adjectives.)




...long and complicated enough?

elvenscout742

Yes. Kampeki! (I'm not entirely sure about when that kana is transcribed and pronounced "m", but I'm pretty sure that's right.)

Dōmo arigatō.