Hot answers tagged te-form
7
Peter Sells (1995) calls ないで as verbal gerund and なくて as adjectival gerund. When you have participial constructions, they do not make difference, but Sells notices that only the verbal gerund can be selected by an auxiliary verb:
食べないでおいた
* 食べなくておいた (Sells 1995:287)
Similarly to that, when you want to use these forms adverbially as in your ...
7
The ~て form can be used to chain sentences together. That is, any two sentences can be made into one by changing the verb of the first sentence into its ~て form. The result can be translated with the conjunction and and means that the first sentence happens and then the second.
In your case
きのうはうちにかえりました。何をしましたか。
Yesterday you went home. What did you ...
6
Trying to translate your initial phrase directly may be too burdensome, but beginning a request with "If I may...," has a direct translation suitable for you:
よろしければ。。。
Here is an example, though the whole sentence is probably a bit too stiff for your purposes:
If I may, I'd like to ask you a few questions about something else.
...
5
Simply, yes, で is just the 〜て form of だ. You could get into a whole discussion on this, but we can see the parallels between them.
Connecting
イ-adjective: 大きくて強い → Big and strong
ナ-adjective: きれいで頭がいい → Pretty and smart
Means/instrumentality
Verbs: 行ってくる → Go and come back ("Come back by means of (first) going")
Nouns: お箸【はし】で食べる → ...
4
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 ...
3
First, let me write out the complete sentence you suggested:
私が結婚したかった人は、ほかの人と結婚してしまいました。
The topic of this sentence is 私が結婚したかった人. In this topic, the noun 人 ("the person") is modified by the relative clause 私が結婚したかった ("I wanted to marry"). The subject particle が links 私 to結婚したかった. Since it's part of a relative clause, it doesn't link up with other ...
3
In general, a standalone TE-form of a verb can be a request. You can essentially think of it as 〜ください being assumed.
In this specific case, it is 待っている that is being conjugated into TE-form, with the い getting omitted since it is casual speech:
知り合いもいるからちょっと待ってて
＝知り合いもいるからちょっと待っていてください
2
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 ...
2
A -て form is usually linked to its sentence. You cannot guess what is happening without the end.
-郵便局行って
- 帰る。 I'll pass by the post office and go home.
- 帰った。 I passed by the post office then went gome.
It is your second guess the correct one.
インフルエンザが流行して、人が亡くなる心配がある
They think/fear people are gonna die because the flu is spreading.
Then, you ...
1
There are other usages which hint it's a て form, like the request 「食べないで」 (although this is probably just an omission of ください), 食べないでほしい, and many other 補助動詞{ほじょどうし} which you can use with it.
So, given it's a て-form, the question is why is it ないで. That で is almost certainly not the 連用形 of だ, because having a copula there does not make sense. Looking ...
1
送る is not a change-of-state verb, so 送っている means "is sending", not "has sent". So you are right, the correct form for the situation you are describing is 送ってある (or simply 送った).
That being said, are you sure she did not say もう送ってる? I sometimes hear てる as a contracted form of てある (although probably not "correct" strictly speaking), but using ている for てある ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
