First post! And NHK Easy question on Vte

[Robman]

Hello all.

My name is Rob. I'm 27, and I've been teaching myself Japanese for a little while now. I've joined the forum as I hope to get some assistance with the grammar questions that are still popping up daily! Of course I'll be happy to help others as much as I'm able as well.

Today I've been reading this NHK Easy News article:
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10014353161000/k10014353161000.html

In it, there are a few instances of clauses ending in verbs in the -te form, like this:
字が上手になりたいと思って書く人
紙を一緒に焼いて火

What is the best way to translate the tense of the verbs here?

 

[lanthas]

Welcome to the forum!

For the first sentence: "people who write, wishing they'll get good at (drawing) characters"
For the second, you left out a part: 紙を一緒に焼いて 火が高く上がる - "They burn the paper together, and the fire rises up high".

 

[Robman]

Hi, thanks!

I guess the thing I'm wondering is, why this form instead of past or non-past? What is the difference?
Why not:
字が上手になりたいと思う書く人
?

Should I treat it as if it's the present continuous?

 

[lanthas]

The -te form is used to connect two or more clauses that are somehow related to each other. The clause that follows each -te verb can be a single verb (as is the case in -te iru), or be longer (as is the case in 焼いて ... 上がる).

You cannot connect two verbs by simply putting them next to each other unchanged like "思う書く"; that's grammatically invalid. You have to use specific grammar to connect them, the most common of which is putting all verbs to be connected except for the last one in the -te form: Xて Yて Zる. The last verb then determines the tense of the complete list (past or present).

思っている would be present continuous ("thinking"). However, 思って書く means simply "think and write" (or better: "write with the thought of ..."), i.e. *not* present continuous. For "writing with the thought of", it would have to be 思って書いている.

 

[Robman]

Ah, that makes sense...

I had encountered Vte then another verb before but I didn't realise that was being used in this context.

Many thanks for your explanation!

 

[Majestic]

In English we call this a gerund.
Gerund - Wikipedia