Japanese Sentence a Day Challenge

[yamitenshi]

@FirstMate-san

What I meant to say is that it’s safe to assume it can be used with verbs to end a clause, but not sure about other uses.

Ah, check Yeah, that makes sense. Given the meaning it would probably be really weird with a noun anyway. I mean… “at the same time as soup” doesn’t sound very logical.

@FirstMate-san

With の／こと there is plenty of stuff like this (lifted from Jisho):
新聞を束にするのを手伝ってくれ。
I would say they mark the entire preceding clause, but that too can depend on how you translate it, I guess?

Hmm… yeah, that makes sense. I almost feel as if the distinction just doesn’t really translate well, and what’s happening in the Japanese grammar doesn’t show up clearly in English

One of these days I’m gonna have to look for monolingual grammar resources. I know monolingual dictionaries help tremendously in understanding nuances and differences between seeming synonyms, so I’m guessing the same would be true for descriptions of grammar.

There’s a good chance I won’t be able to make heads or tails of it though.

EDIT

Ah, I may have to just get the Dictionary of Japanese Gammar books:

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Do you have the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar? If so there is a detailed explanation in there :)! Here is the outline of it. (Sentence = S) S ということ is used to represent a concept in the S rather than a fact. S こと is when S represents a fact (or near fact). But if it is a fact that the speaker knows by an indirect experience S ということ is okay. Or if S is likely to happen, both are okay. I think there is another point or two… but they have escaped my head.

So if I’m reading this correctly, it’s not necessarily phrase vs verb as I understood it, it’s more about the indirection inherent in こと that was described in the short grammar questions thread earlier in relation to ことがある.

So where 食べること always refers to the actual act of eating, 食べるということ refers to the idea of eating. Which may well be the same in translation, but not necessarily - and it’s much less direct in meaning.