The following sentence was from a group chat, and I felt like the usage of ながら here was a bit odd:
歩きながらメッセージを送れない。
I can't send messages while I'm walking.
I felt it was odd as I always assumed that the verb following ながら cannot describe a state and has to be a dynamic verb. I also thought that perhaps 間 would be preferable here instead of ながら?
Could someone please tell me if my assumption is wrong, and if the sentence is actually both valid and natural?
The person who said that may have meant to add the sense of potentiality to the whole act of 歩きながらメッセージを送る. Though it sounds incomplete as an independent sentence, it doesn’t sound particularly unnatural in a subordinate clause (provided it is not a quote).
歩きながらメッセージを送れないのは当然だ。
歩きながらメッセージを送れないことはない。
歩きながらメッセージを送れないなら、立ち止まればいい。
As an independent sentence, the following sounds more correct and more natural.
歩きながらメッセージを送ることはできない。
Your sentence doesn't quite sound right to me, although I can't quite point to a grammar rule to explain why. You might be correct in assuming that the potential form of the main verb renders it as a stative verb and doesn't sit right with the ～ながら. However, I think that if you insert a topic marker は then the sentence would work.
歩きながらはメッセージが送れない。
