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Another Sentence Structure Question

Aurura

Reaching out...
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私は きのう おとうとと テニスを しました。

Romaji: Watashi kinou otouto to tenisu o shimashita.
Meaning: "I played tennis with my younger brother yesterday."
Literal: "I yesterday younger brother with tennis played."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


My question is: Is it mandatory to put the time the action occured ("yesteday") right after "I" in this sentence? Or are there other ways that this can be said?

Also, if きのう is put at the beginning, would it be neccessary to add は to it instead of adding は to 私?


Thank you for your help... :haihai:
- Aurura
 
It is not obligatory to put adverbs after 私は. As long as the adverb comes prior to the final verb, it can be moved. kinoo can be put in front of watashi wa without the wa particle.

"きのう 私は おとうとと テニスを しました。" is fine.
 
Thank you for that! And now, what if the sentence got totaly scrambled around like so:

私は おとうとと テニスを きのう しました。

Does it still make sense? Or make -as much- sense?

Thanks again,
- Aurura
 

Two reasons why this doesn't work:
- You are treating きのう a verb (きのうする) which is non-sensical.
- You are placing the time into the verb phrase (a phrase following を must be a verb phrase).

Japanese grammar is almost entirely based on modifier words marking the parts of the sentence for you, though they are often omitted where they are obvious.
 
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Also it may not be the best way but i think it is also ok to say 私は弟と昨日テニスをしました。 basically putting it before or after を (the object marker) is a no no, because well, you did not "do" yesterday, you did (played) tennis.
 
I thought it was OK to have it directly before しました, if you really want to put the focus on it being yesterday that you played tennis with your brother. Of course, it may be better to just phrase that as （私は）弟とテニスをしたのは昨日だった。but anyway...

Can I get some confirmation on this? I may be coming from 岡山 or 北九州 with this one too, or maybe it will be 青森 or somewhere else in 東北 this time.
 

You're correct Glenn-san.
Any scrambling is fine as long as the verb shimashita comes at the end (actually, in casual conversation, even postposing other elements after the verb takes place).
私は弟とテニスを昨日した。
私は弟と昨日テニスをした。
私は昨日弟とテニスをした。
弟とテニスを昨日私はした。
テニスを私は弟と昨日した。
etc...
any of these are grammatically OK.
 
Yeah, i guess using the right pauses when you speak makes it sound ok. But I am confident that テニス and を must be connected. Correct Grapefruit?
 
I'd say definitely on that one, since it's sort of like the accusative inflection of Latin verbs. It's how you know テニス is the direct object.

(Sorry, I know I'm not grapefruit)
 
弟と私は昨日テニスをしました。

Probably this order of words is the only exception. In this sentence, 弟と私 is the subject. So it means "My younger brother and I played tennis yesterday." (grammatically different, almost same in meaning, though)
 
Wow... thank you again, all!
 
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