Dropping particles in casual speech/songs

Question

Hey i was listening to this song And it felt weird for me when one of these lines seemed to lack a particle, I am wondering if it is lacking one and it is ok to do so since it is a song, or if there was no need to a particle in there...

[君の前前前世から僕は君を探し始めたよ]

Why can I say 探し始めた without a particle, would it be ok to say 探しを始めた？

Is it perhaps like the difference between "I began to look for" vs "I began looking for" ?

When it's ok to drop a particle in casual speech? I know that if my sentence contains only one "が" particle it'd not be ok to drop it, but what about sentences with more particles?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

No particle has been omitted in your example sentence. You can not say masu-stem + を始める in the first place (unless the "verb" is actually a lexicalized noun derived from some verb (eg 支払い = payment, 戦い = battle)).

Regardless of whether it's in speech or not, masu-stem + 始める is the right way of saying "start to [verb]", and there must not be any particle in between.

• 歩き始める start to walk
• 見始める start to watch
• 食べ始める start to eat

Don't ask me why. Japanese language has tons of 複合動詞 (compound verbs) which just look like this; 走り出す, 飛び立つ, 動き回る, 出払う, and so on.

Not to be confused with subsidiary verbs, which are small in number, and always follow the te-form of another verb.