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Example sentence from 研究社 新和英大辞典 第5版:

その詩人の発想はまことに融通無碍{ゆうずうむげ}、 操る言葉は自由自在だ The poet has a truly unlimited command of ideas and manipulates words with complete freedom.

At the moment I can only see it as a compound sentence that could be split into:

その詩人の発想はまことに融通無碍(だ)

and

操る言葉は自由自在だ

融通無碍 is listed as an noun or adjective (形動) by 大辞泉. Therefore, shouldn't it be in connective form 融通無碍で~ or ~であり~?

その詩人の発想はまことに融通無碍で、 操る言葉は自由自在だ。

その詩人の発想はまことに融通無碍であり、 操る言葉は自由自在だ。

Please help me understand the original sentence.

2 Answers 2

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The meaning of this sentence is the same as those with で/であり.

Omitting certain verbs such as だ/です makes this sentence sound somewhat more rhythmical and crisp. I think this is at least closely related to so-called 体言【たいげん】止【ど】め, a common rhetorical technique in which a sentence is ended with a noun.

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You have pretty much answered your own question.

When a sentence consists of multiple clauses where each is about the same topic and each can logically end with the same verb, auxiliary verb or adjective, you can omit that word in all of the clauses except for the last.

「その[詩人]{しじん}の[発想]{はっそう}はまことに[融通無碍]{ゆうずうむげ}、 [操]{あやつ}る[言葉]{ことば}は[自由自在]{じゆうじざい}。」

is an example of such a sentence. Here, the auxiliary verb 「だ」 at the end is the key word.

Add the same 「だ」 to the first clause and you will have a perfect sentence:

「その詩人の発想はまことに融通無碍。」

That means you can drop that 「だ」 because it will be "saved" till the end of the whole sentence. What we actually dropped is the 連用形 of 「だ」, which is「で」 because the sentence continues on after that first clause.

Regarding 「であり」, one could only say that it was 「であり」 that was omitted ONLY IF the whole sentence ended with 「である」.

This time, it is 「だ」 that ends the sentence; therefore, it is its continuative form 「で」 that was omitted from the first clause.

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  • It's a shame I can't tick two answers at the same time! Thank you, that was very helpful.
    – user9771
    May 12, 2015 at 10:50

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