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夜、安心して歩けるように街灯を増やして欲しい。

I can sort of understand the meaning of the sentence as someone wants/wishes that the (number of) street lights to increase so that they can feel safe walking at night. But I can't understand what grammar rules were used/observed to form 安心して歩ける

Given the complete sentence above. What is the purpose of having the te-form of する?

Is it used

  1. as a connector to mean "and" e.g. To have peace of mind and to walk?

  2. to mean "while" e.g. have peace of mind while walking?

Maybe there's some grammar construction that I'm missing? Is 歩く even considered to be a motion verb in the same vein as 行く and 来る?

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  • What's the problem with "feel safe walking" which you hinted at first? Does it mean "feel safe and walk" or "feel safe while walking?"
    – macraf
    Commented May 14, 2020 at 18:53
  • From my experience with English, I would go with the second option. But seeing as I can't see a ながら in the sentence I would think otherwise. My main problem here is that I can't see how 安心して歩ける was formed using the grammar rules that I know. From a dictionary, I see that 安心 can mean peace of mind, so translating each word literally I get "Do/have peace of mind and want to walk". Looking at other parts of the sentence, I can then infer the translation I got. I know that -ていく and -てくる are more common cases of the Te-form + motion verb, So I wondered would the same logic behind those apply here?
    – Mamonjr1
    Commented May 14, 2020 at 20:52
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    Related: japanese.stackexchange.com/q/62521/5010
    – naruto
    Commented May 15, 2020 at 6:15

1 Answer 1

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Another related thread: て form and adverbial meaning

Sometimes the て form has an adverbial function.

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  • I see, I can just treat the 安心して as an adverbial clause modifying 歩けるよう. Regarding the sentence in the linked thread would 包丁でたまねぎをきる also mean the same thing?
    – Mamonjr1
    Commented May 16, 2020 at 12:01
  • @Mamonjr1 Yes the meaning is basically the same. Hopefully someone corrects me if I'm wrong, but I believe the pattern using 使って just puts a little more emphasis on the fact that a particular thing was "used."
    – charlemagne
    Commented May 17, 2020 at 0:42

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