Continuative (te-form)

Production Rules:

* These two forms are not completely interchangable. In many situations, one or the other will sound more natural for the particular construction it is being used in.

Inflection Examples:

Irregulars:

Usage Notes & Examples:

1. The -te form has many uses in Japanese. By itself it is not a complete form: you can't end a gramatically complete sentence with it. It is a continuative form, forming a subordinate clause that requires a main clause for completion.
2. One function is to list concurrent or successive actions or events where these events are somehow related. Often, but not always, there may be an implied causality between the actions. This form cannot connect two arbitrarily unrelated statements the way "and" can in English. Often, the topic doesn't change between the linked clauses.
   • 三週間前送って、いままでにそこに 届いただろう。
     san shuukan mae okutte, ima made ni soko ni todoita darou.
     I sent it three weeks ago and it's probably gotten there by now.
3. Because the te-form is incomplete on its own, it can't come at the end of a grammatically complete sentence, but it frequently does come at the end of an utterance where the speaker is trailing off and leaving the remainder of the sentence implied. This is sometimes done to create polite ambiguity, or to be deliberately vague or indirect. Other times it's just part of colloquial language, where the speaker knows the rest of the sentence will be understood and leaves it out.
4. Since the sentence-final (main clause) verb is generally the one which shows the politeness, the above listed polite te-forms are not heard much in ordinary speech. In very polite contexts, however, where keigo (honorific speech) is being used, the speaker may be want to leave a sentence trailing off at the end of a te-form clause, but be uncomfortable not indicating politeness. This one place the polite forms will be heard.
5. The polite forms also make some appearances in polite set expressions such as 明けましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) — happy new year.
6. There are many idiomatic constructions built around combining a -te form verb with an auxiliary. These are covered in the Expressions section below.
7. One of the most common uses of the -te form is to construct a request, or in essence a polite imperative. This construction is created by adding ください (kudasai) to the -te form. Because this expression is so common and important, and because there are some related forms, it is covered as the request form. Often the -te form alone, without ください (kudasai) is used as a shorthand form of this expression (which also makes it a bit less formal).
8. A clause which uses a te-form verb is always an adverbial clause, and it can be helpful to think of it this way when trying to understand its use. What this means is, the te-form clause is somehow modifying a subsequent clause or the main clause of the sentence, and providing some kind of information as to how, when, or where it is done.
   • シロップをかけて、パンケーキを食べた。
     shiroppu wo kakete, pankeeki wo tabeta.
     I poured on syrup and ate the pancakes.
   In this case, the te-form clause gives us information about how the pancakes were eaten. Even in most cases where it appears the te-form is linking a simple chain of events, you can find the adverbial interpretation of the te-form clause, and doing this may help you understand its logic.

Expressions

-te kudasai

-te agaru

-te kuru

-te morau

-te oku

-te iku / -te kuru

-te miru

-te kara

Copyright © 2010-2011 Collin McCulley. All Rights Reserved.

Page cached 6/25/2017 6:52:50 AM