Reading ブラックジャックによろしく manga exercises (p14-and up)

I wanted to return to this.

In the 12 functions listed in the article, they count 〜て+[something] as different functions. For example,

I don’t have any issues understanding the progressive 〜て➕いる form since it’s not really a 〜て form on its own so to me that’s not really the definition I’m looking for.

This :top: is the function I’m looking for as it’s simply 〜て on its own. Which is also what ayamadori refers to in :arrow_down: the quote below.

All of the other functions if of 〜て are not strictly speaking 〜て functions, they’re 〜て+(something else) as part of the form. Do yo understand what I’m saying?

In English for example, it’s like the word “reading”. It can be a gerund as in: “Reading is fun” but if you want to associate “reading” as a progressive, it’s not “reading” on its own, it “reading” + auxiliary “to be”. So it wouldn’t be right to amalgamate the function of reading as a gerund and reading as a present participle.

Not sure if what I’m saying is clear or not.

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Claiming 6:

Click me and the truth shall be revealed...

First part:
肝不全 心不全『に』加え…

In order to understand this sentence, I need a lot of vocabulary background. Here’s a sample:
肝不全【かんふぜん】liver failure;
心不全【しんふぜん】heart failure;
に grammatical particle;
加え【くわえ】in addition;
:question:my dictionary doesn’t list any 加え on its own. It lists: 加え. Is this a colloquial thing where the 〜て is omitted when speaking?


Second part:
…心停止(cardiac arrest)『に』よる
:speech_balloon:In addition to a liver failure, heart failure he did a cardiac arrest


Third part:

低酸素[血]症『で』…

Si the reason I put 血 in brackets is because my dictionary lists 低酸素症 as hypoxia, without 血.

Hypoxia:

Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level.

…so I assume that you can have types of hypoxia depending on the part of the body. In this case it’s blood hypoxia… or hypoxemia. Once I found out hypoxemia, I visited weblio and bingo: hypoxemia = 低酸素血症.


Fourth part:
脳細胞(brain cells)『が』やられています
やられています: 〜て+います progressive form of やられる: to suffer damage;

:speech_balloon:In addition to liver and heart failure, he had a cardiac arrest; the hypoxemia is damaging his brain cells

(My, that was complex)

くわえる being an ichidan verb, maybe that is the other way to link phrases : beside the te-form, there is also the possibility to use the i-form (or the single stem for 1-dan verbs).

So here “… 加え” has a similar function than “…加えて”.
I think that use is more formal/litterary.

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Je ne comprends pas ce que tu essaies de dire, il faudrait que tu développes davantage parce que là ce n’est pas clair pour moi.

Edit: I looked up 加え on weblio and there’s an entry for it, “in addition”. Weblio might every well be my new dictionary resource.

I looked it up on Hinative:

but I often see に加え in formal sentences like newspaper or something written and in talking, we often say に加えてthan に加え.

So you were right about the formal/casual morphology.

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7: どうしてそのまま死なせてやらなかった

どうしてそのまま死なせてやらなかった

どうして: in what way, in what manner;
まま: once in a while;
死なせて:
Ok, now, I think this is a 〜て form.

So here it is it used to connect to the grammar point やらなかった, the past negative of やる, “to do”. I think so! :bulb:If that’s the case I think it just clicked in my head.

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I mean, these two constructs are equivalent (the second being more formal)

1. te-form

昨日酒を飲んで魚を食べた
シャワーを浴びて友達に葉書を書きます
猫を助けて家に帰ります

2. 連用形 (i-form)

昨日酒を飲み魚を食べた
シャワーを浴び友達に葉書を書きます
猫を助け家に帰ります

I call it, “i-form” because for 5dan verbs it is the stem with the “i” vowel.
Of course 1-dan verbs only have a single stem.
I think the proper term is the 連用形
(BTW, what would be the proper Japanese name for “te-form” ?)

Don’t worry, I get what you mean: ‘-ing’ when used to discuss the action itself (like a noun) is different from ‘to be’ + ‘-ing’ which is basically a verb form. It’s like “Lire un livre, ça fait du bien” vs “Je suis en train de lire un livre”. So what you’re saying is that you feel like て+auxiliary should be treated separately, since it’s not the same as the usual general ‘linking’ function. That’s fair. However, the reason I tried to do a unified (aka ‘amalgamated’) analysis is because I was trying to show you that, at least for me, there’s a way to derive all those meanings from the original linking function. It’s just a way of thinking. Of course, exactly what て means with auxiliary verbs has been determined by usage: カメラを買ってくれた probably used to just mean ‘[he] bought a camera and gave it to me’, but over time, people started using that ‘giving’ idea in a more abstract way that meant that the action was done ‘for me (or my circle of people)’. However, that doesn’t meant that we can’t attempt to understand how those meanings came about.

Honestly, I would have preferred a set of て examples that didn’t use the typical auxiliary verbs, but what I was trying to do was to give you some examples of how to interpret て in context, since that seemed to be difficult to grasp. You definitely should learn the meanings of the various て+auxiliary structures, but knowing how they’re derived from the verbs’ original meanings will help you to figure out て-forms in general. You see what I mean? That was my idea when I started analysing. Honestly, if you want, we can grab a random text sample of maybe 5 sentences from somewhere (a newspaper, maybe?) and I’ll try to analyse the て structures inside them. It takes some getting used to, but I genuinely think interpreting the て form is about finding the most logical link possible between two actions.

I understood your last reply.

Is that a -te form there?

Yes, te-form of the causative (死なせる) + helper やる, itself in negative and past.

So maybe you prefer to see it as " ~てやる"

So then I am right to base my understanding on ayamadori’s quote:

()なせ is linking ()なせる with やる. We’re not talking about a -te which connects clauses here.

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OK, I probably missed some stuff as I scrolled, but I’m writing this to reply to a few vocabulary/grammar points I spotted in the translations that have been done recently.

First of all, in this context, 様 is probably read さま, because it comes after a person’s name/title. お父様 (otou-sama) is just a block that means ‘your father’. A term of address like ‘san’ or ‘sama’ has to be added to the word ‘father’ because of politeness: the professor is referring to someone else’s father, not his own.
なくなりました is a verb of sorts, but it’s really just ない (adjective/verb meaning ‘does not exist’) being turned into なく (its adverbial form) and being added to なりました (to become). So it really just means ‘became non-existent’ or ‘has become non-existent’. So I would have translated it as ‘Your father’s hope of recovery is almost gone/has almost disappeared/has become almost non-existent.’ (Of course, the most natural way to say it would be ‘Your father’s hope for recovery has dropped to close to zero.’ However, that’s quite different from the Japanese sentence.) Either way though, the translation as a whole was quite accurate, which is good.

I’m honestly not sure, but I’d say probably not. The ‘somehow’ indicates that he felt it was unlikely, which matches the fact that he thinks the chances of recovery are very low. In an anime, I once saw an exchange like this: ‘Are you ok?’ 「ええ、なんとか」The guy who said なんとか was a very humble, pleasant noble, and he was out of breath after running from a monster.

This is correct, and yes, it is more formal. Or closer to written language. Ichidan verbs are the ones that end in る and for which る vanishes when you add ます. Godan verbs are the ones for whom the ‘u’ sound becomes an ‘i’ sound when ます is added. Ichidan = the verb stem only has one form which doesn’t change. Godan = the verb stem changes depending on whether it’s negative, imperative, linked to ます etc. There are five forms in total. In essence, the usage of 加え you see has the same meaning as 加えて, but it’s formed by taking the ます stem of the verb (you take the formal ます form and remove the masu to get this).

Bonus (but I don’t want to overload everyone with information, so ignore this if it’s confusing): in formal written language, the masu stem is used to end clauses, while the て-form links verbs within clauses. I can’t think of a good example now (my fluency has limits, as you can see), so please just take my word for it. You can find examples in NHK news articles when there are long sentences. The simplified way of understanding it: the て-form shows a slightly closer link between verbs than the ます stem in the same position.

Yes, you’re right. It’s a grammar point in this case: 〜てやる means ‘to do 〜 for someone else’. It’s similar to 〜てあげる.

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@YanagiPablo
Regarding your question:

It is called(動詞の)テ形.

Also, 品ひん詞し means “part of speech” which would help when you Google things like that.

@YanagiPablo:
More information regarding -te form. Apparently, it’s not something native speakers use in grammar:

て in Japanese grammar is considered a conjunction particle (接続助詞) which attaches to the conjunctive form of a verb (連用形), also called the masu stem form in English

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Re: 7: どうしてそのまま死なせてやらなかった

Am I right in my interpretation of まま, that it means “once in a while”? That’s what the dictionary says but I think someone met that expression before and someone else commented and I don’t think they said it meant “once in a while”.

:speech_balloon:How once in a while…

I’m a bit puzzled about 死なせてやらなかった. やらなかった is in the simple past negative, “to do”. So “didn’t do” but it’s linked to 死なせて by the ~て at the end. So “didn’t do” :arrow_right: let die = didn’t let die?

Why not just write 死なかった instead? Why is the やる necessary there?

It’s not the same:

どうして死なかった : why didn’t he die ?
どうして死なせなかった why couldn’t he die ?
どうして死なせてやらなかった : why didn’t you let him die ?

Pr. Shiratori asks Saitou why he didn’t just let the old man die when his heart stopped.

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I thought YanagiPablo had ままas a “condition” or “state of being” sometime last week (it’s a blur). I read this as (why)(let that (guy) die) (you didn’t?) Sorry, no support, no references, unschooled instincts only.

Aside to Zizka

Lire les commentaires en français a été agréable. Aussi, tu m’as beaucoup fait rire:
Click me and the truth shall be revealed

Bwa ha ha!!

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No, no, that’s not what it means here at all. Maybe the dictionary is referring to another use of まま, but it’s not this one. In fact, I wrote about it on this forum a while back in one of our analysis threads. I did an extremely etymological analysis of まま. In essence, it means ‘state’ or ‘condition’, and sometimes refers to a sort of ‘status quo’. So yes, @Shannon-8, you remembered correctly.

I think the 2nd is closer to ‘Why didn’t you let/make him die?’ (Of course, ‘let’ makes a lot more sense here.) The difference between the 2nd and the 3rd is that 〜てやる is like 〜てあげる, so it has the nuance of doing something for someone else, and makes it clear that the speaker considers letting the old man pass on without having to undergo a pointless operation a good thing, almost like it’s a ‘favour’ they could have done for the old man.

EDIT: BTW everyone, so… gonna be needing to spend more time studying stuff that isn’t Japanese. I’m actually in prépa, (I think YanagiPablo knows what that is. Zizka might as well.) which is normally quite intense. I need to revise coz the entrance exams are happening in about a month, it’s just that I haven’t been in the mood to study lately. I might still come online during breaks, but knowing that I’m kinda addicted to giving detailed explanations and so on, I need to limit my time here (so I don’t keep reading new threads and writing new explanations, and so I don’t eat up time for actual breaks). Continue to feel free to tag me, but also know that I might not come online at all if you don’t (except in the evenings, French time). When all is said and done, hopefully I’ll be admitted to a good engineering school in August, and I’ll be able to restart my Japanese studies in full force, but for now, that’s that.

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Well, I was referring to weblio’s entry:

Actually, there’s another entre for そのまま:
1〈もとのまま〉

そのままにしておく

leave [let] something alone [rest there]

You’re the person who had talked about it then. Since the explanations are scattered I don’t know where it was unfortunately.

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Ok, I went looking. If we use kanji, it’s 間々 for ‘sometimes’ and 儘 for ‘condition/state’. There’s a pitch accent difference. See if you can find recordings on a site like Forvo. Basically though,
For 儘: 1st syllable low(L), 2nd high(H), and the particle that comes after is low (PL)
For 間々: two possibilities

  • HL-PL
  • LH-PH (particle high)
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We’ll try not to be missing you too hard, @Jonapedia. You gotta prioritize, mon. (Waah!! A MONTH!!!)

That word 儘 is hard to grasp; I think it doesn’t have a direct equivalent.
But, yes, here (particularly with その まま as you found out), it is about the idea of a continuous unchanged thing.

I think the idea is that,
そのまま死なせてやる
decomposition: that まま / to.die+causative+do.for.him
=> make him be able to die without changes
=> let him die peacefully

(For what it’s worth, Google translate gives “Let me die as it is”)

And if we look at the translation made in the wasabi site (I put the link here), they translated the whole sentence (どうしてそのまま死なせてやらなかった) as:
“Why didn’t you just let him die?"

そのまま rendered by “just”.