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This image from the Hololive subreddit has me scratching my head. It seems to suggest that there was only one way of interpreting the tweet at the top of the image. I checked just to be sure but according to this Chiebukuro question and its answers, し functions as a connective — i.e. I did A, and then, B, similar to して. And that being the case, I thought this tweet was deliberately written in a way that you could interpret it in two different ways. In one interpretation, she (the twitter user) would "finish the sentence" on her stream tomorrow. In another, she won a PS5 and would talk more about it on her stream tomorrow.

Is my interpretation correct? In other words — were both valid ways of interpreting the tweet?

To be even more specific - their assertion that "当選し" doesn't mean anything on its own can't be correct, can it? Surely the twitter user could've meant "I won a ps5, and.. (to be continued in the stream)"?

(I know that technically, if し really was a connective here, there should've been something after it that finished the whole sentence. As it is right now the sentence is incomplete. However grammar rules are broken all the time in casual conversations and online comments, so I don't think that's enough to rule out the second interpretation. That's just my intuition however, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

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  • Isn't it just the case that your "second interpretation" is itself one of the possible continuations included in the "first interpretation"? In the image they only mentioned a positive or negative past conjugation of the verb, but in reality many grammatically correct variations could follow. They're just not all as likely. The idea of the first interpretation is that you can't tell for sure until later, and I think that's definitely the case.
    – Leebo
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 4:11
  • @Leebo I see what you're saying about it being fundamentally ambiguous but I don't understand their assertion that "当選し" doesn't mean anything in that context. Surely the original message could've been interpreted as "I won a ps5, and... (to be continued next stream)"?
    – Amerain
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 7:05
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    I think I understand that you're saying that since 当選し (continuation し) is a possibility that isn't "waiting" for something to directly attach to it the way that the し of 当選しませんでした is it's somehow different... But it to me it's just one possibility that still requires confirmation, making it effectively the same as any other option that isn't confirmed.
    – Leebo
    Commented Jan 13, 2021 at 8:07

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It's just as ShuaiJanaiDesu in that image says. The image means people who don't understand Japanese well thought Botan won a PS5 just by looking at the word 当選. Botan's original tweet saying 当選し was deliberatively left unfinished, and it could be either 当選しました ("I won") or 当選しませんでした ("I didn't win").

If there had been a comma after 当選し (i.e., PS5は当選し、, 中止法), people could have excluded the possibility of it being 当選しなかった or 当選しませんでした. Since there is no comma in the actual tweet, we can say the sentence may have been abruptly cut off in the middle of a conjugation.

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