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上下のフロアを繋ぐ階段は各層にひとつのみ、その全てが怪物のうろつく危険な迷宮区画に存在するため発見も踏破も困難だが、一度誰かが突破して上層の都市に辿り着けばそこと下層の各都市の≪転移門≫が連結されるため誰もが自由に移動できるようになる。

There were 2 things I didn't get in this sentence (or maybe a paragraph...?):

  1. What is the usage of ため in the two appearances of it in the text? (Marked)
    I could tell that it's not the normal usage of ため+に・の and it doesn't makes sense to me as well.
  2. How can this 怪物のうろつく危険な迷宮区画 be translated (literally)? I don't get the spacing in this part... According to the dictionary, the na-adj meaning of 危険 is "danger, peril, hazard"... What I don't get is how exactly "danger" is an adjective? There is another option of "dangerous" in the dictionary, but it wasn't marked as a na-adj meaning. Ignoring the adjective comment I made above, I'd translate it as "A maze area in which there is a danger of roaming monsters" or something like that - but I wanna know why if possible :-)

Thank you in advance!
The sentence above was taken from the novel "Sword Art Online 1"!

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    As for point 2, probably you should get a better dictionary. Jan 27, 2013 at 20:58
  • @snailplane - Page 10. It's the prologue :) TsuyoshiIto - It's jisho.org... It's the same as well in WWWJDIC
    – xTCx
    Jan 27, 2013 at 21:01
  • WWWJDIC has 危険 as dangerous. You are doing pretty well reading this, though, considering you don't realize that some words can be used both as nouns and as na-adjectives. Keep up the good work ;) Also, ため can be used to indicate a cause/reason, that is, it can be translated as "because". Maybe that helps...?
    – Earthliŋ
    Jan 27, 2013 at 21:05
  • @user1205935 Looks like jisho.org is formatting edict in a misleading way. The (whatever) before a number belongs to the following sense, not the preceding, but jisho.org puts the line break just before the number. (It also seems to discard the (whatever) before sense #1 entirely on entries like いい加減. Yikes!)
    – user1478
    Jan 27, 2013 at 21:09
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    Bug reported to jisho.org. EDIT: Good news! Kim Ahlström responded to my email saying the bug with jisho.org has been fixed!
    – user1478
    Jan 27, 2013 at 22:00

1 Answer 1

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  1. ため can be used to indicate reason/cause. It is always best to check a Japanese dictionary when you can.

  2. The sentence should be parsed as (怪物のうろつく) 危険な迷宮区画, i.e. the sentence 怪物がうろつく modifies (as relative clause) 危険な迷宮区画 (keyword ga/no conversion).

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  • Thank you!! 2 last things though; 1) I'm used to see ため followed by に or の. Why isn't it the case this time? Is it particle omission, or perhaps a usage I'm not aware of...? 2) Makes sense, except the ga/no conversion part... I tried looking for some info about it in google. I found several academic articles about it but couldn't understand much of it and how it relates to this situation... It's probably above my level but I'm a little curious! :D
    – xTCx
    Jan 28, 2013 at 13:59
  • nevermind the first... ww8.tiki.ne.jp/~tmath/language/jpverbs/lesson43.htm ni is optional...
    – xTCx
    Jan 28, 2013 at 14:23
  • @xTCx For 2) I'm sure there are many academic articles on it, but you can get a long way just knowing that it exists and just think of the sentence with の converted back to が.
    – Earthliŋ
    Jan 28, 2013 at 21:24

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