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I think it would be like a musician studying acoustics, or avid dog owner/trainer studying canine anatomy. It probably all depends on what your future goals are with Japanese. If you're planning to move to Japan, or just keeping that option open, and working and perhaps marrying a Japanese, then you should just remain as a JSL (Japanese as a Second Language) ...

It's [歩]{ある}かないで[渡]{わた}る cross without walking 歩いて渡らない not cross on foot In this case you want the second option. For "not eating" it is 食べていない I haven't eaten whereas 食べないでいる, albeit more logical in a sense, is hardly used, meaning you'd have to provide a lot of context to make it sound natural. Note that 食べていない is a continued state ...

I've got an old PDF folder full of papers on Japanese, and I managed to pull up two which might be helpful. (I've been on the search for a full detailed phonetic study of Japanese. Add a comment if you know of some other technical resources!). The first, the open paper Processing missing vowels: Allophonic processing in Japanese (Ogasawara and Warner, 2009) ...

In the Vて+V case, I think loosely translating て as "by" here helps give a little intuition: 歩いて渡る "cross by walking" 歩かないで渡る "cross (not by walking)" 歩いて渡らない "not (cross by walking)" However, this intuition does not hold with auxiliary verbs (補助動詞{ほじょどうし}), and certainly not with inflectable particles (助動詞{じょどうし}). With auxiliary verbs, you ...

Just going to throw my 2￥ in here. Learning anything is good. More information is always better than less information. But learning linguistics is absolutely unneccesary when learning a language. Just as learning the physics of throwing a ball is not at all neccessary to playing a sport. If linguistics excites you, then get into it. If not, don't worry ...

I will not comment on whether or not linguistics is helpful for learning a language, but just want to say that traditional Japanese study, most saliently known by the works of 橋本進吉 and is taught in Japanese elementary schools and junior and senior highschools, is harmful for either learning Japanese or learning linguistics. Its the kind of grammar that uses ...