Talk:ずに

Grammatical notes

@TAKASUGI Shinji, エリック・キィ, pinging you two as native speakers.

Similar to the notes over at て (te), this entry contains descriptions that don't seem accurate to me -- but I am uncertain if that reflects mistake in the descriptions, or a gap in my own knowledge.

Of particular note, the examples given that are translated as "X because not Y" strike me as incorrect -- to express a reason, shouldn't there be a の (no) in there? ～ないので何々. The second example seems problematic in addition due to problems with tense.

Do either of you have any insights you could share? ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 03:23, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Eirikr: Structures for cause with ren'yōkei exist, but the examples you pointed out seem somewhat awkward, indeed. As for those cases, I use mostly なくて in casual speech. I cannot conclude that the first example 僕は英語が話せないで恥ずかしかった is totally ungrammatical, but there is room for somewhat improvement. The following sentences are both grammatical (contrary to the current description), but there seems to exist difference in terms of register:

  僕は英語が話せなくて恥ずかしかった。 - sounds casual

  僕は英語が話せずに恥ずかしかった。 - sounds appearing in novels or non-fictions

The second one スージーが遊びに来ないでほっとした seems to be the same with a matter of vocabulary. It is also not ungrammatical, but I feel urged to rewrite it as follows:

スージーが遊びに来なくてほっとした。 - sounds casual

スージーが遊びに来ず(に)ほっとした。 - sounds appearing in novels or non-fictions

The ないで structure for cause is grammatical without any doubt when some kinds of word follows it.

スージーが遊(あそ)びに来(こ)ないで良(よ)かった。 ― sūjī ga asobi ni konai de yoka'ta. ― It is happy that Susie didn't come to play.

The remaining concern is that the examples currently displayed may be cited from Makino & Tsutsui (1989). These authors seem to be native Japanese speakers and we need to check the reference before we modify the examples and this concern is also applied to the て problem. --Eryk Kij (talk) 09:34, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Eryk Kij, thank you for the reply!

• For the first example 「僕は...」, both of your rewrites sound more fitting to my ear. Both also sound slightly less causal than the "because" translation; in English, I'd express these more like "I can't speak English, so I was embarrassed", or something along those lines. "Because" to me sounds very specific about a cause, in which case I'd expect the Japanese to be more like 「英語が話せないので恥ずかしかった」. Perhaps I'm overthinking it, or my sense of nuance is off?
• For the second example, I wonder similarly about causality. For a specific cause, I'd expect 「来ないのでほっとした」. For less emphasis on cause, I'd expect the 「来なくてほっとした」 that you give, rendered in English more as "I was relieved that she didn't come".

For the second example as well, I'm curious about tense / aspect. The 来ないでほっとした construction sounds to me more like "I was relieved that she was not coming", as in, during the time when the speaker expected Susie to come, the speaker learned that Susie would not be coming after all, and was relieved as a result. This is different from the speaker being relieved because that same span of time passed, and Susie never showed up (but had still been expected to arrive). This latter scenario sounds more like the given English in the usex, "I was relieved that she did not come". (I feel like the 来なくてほっとした construction could fit either scenario, while 来ずにほっとした sounds to me more like the latter scenario.) To express the given English, "I was relieved because she did not come", I'd expect Japanese phrasing more like 「来なかったのでほっとした。」 Does that match your impressions at all, or am I off base?

Nuances aside, I don't know that I've ever encountered the given structure 「～①ないで②何々」 to mean "[①CAUSE][②RESULT]", and it seems like it strikes you also as somewhat unnatural / uncommon, from what I read here. This suggests to me that this is not a grammatical pattern that we should be presenting as the page is currently written.

Your mention of the source raises an additional issue, in that we must ensure that this page is not just a copy-paste of the given reference work. Looking just now, it appears that Google Books only has "snippet view" for this title, but even just from that limited visibility, it looks like our page content may be a copyvio — https://books.google.com/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&id=3wMrAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22A+Dictionary+of+Basic+Japanese+Grammar%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22konai+de%22 — and consequently I think we must remove this content due to legal concerns. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)