2

This is a complete sentence from a book.

おいしいお料理に、とても楽しい雀の踊り。

(There was??) delicious food and a fun sparrow dance.

For context, in the previous sentence an old man is introduced to the bird and its friends. In the succeeding sentence we are told that the old man had a great time.

1) Is the sentence correct or is there a bit missing from the end? I would like to write　おいしいお料理に、とても楽しい雀の踊りがいました。

2) If it is correct what is the grammar here? Under what circumstances can I omit the verb and why would I do so?

3) What is に doing. It appears to be acting as 'and'. I've never seen this before?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    In newspapers, you will sometimes see a sentence end in a noun, and that is called ”体言止め”.
    – red shoe
    May 30, 2015 at 14:09

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

  1. The sentence is fine in a storybook sense. It is not a complete sentence, but books don't always use complete sentences--English included. The verb is implied, though it wouldn't be いました like you wrote. ありました or more colorfully perhaps （が）待っていました。

  2. You can omit anything that is understood without it. As Japanese is very verb-centric it's more common to omit nouns than verbs, but sometimes, as in this example, it's fine to omit the verb.

  3. The に　here means "in addition to" or "not only".

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    I was always under the assumption that a complete sentence in Japanese did not require a verb and a noun like English did, but I never really looked it up to see. You see it all over the place, which is good enough for me. Probably falls under your "you can omit anything that's inferred" rule.
    – kiss-o-matic
    May 29, 2015 at 18:59
  • 1
    Grammatically, Japanese is very verb-centric and this is really the only required part of speech in a sentence. It can, however, be omitted when its implied, or when answering a question etc.
    – jhenn
    May 29, 2015 at 19:27

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .