タグ: two nouns

Yesterday, we learned how to use two adjectives in a sentence. I wrote at the beginning of yesterday’s post that “‘to’ is to juxtapose two nouns”.

Today’s construction may seem to be contradict to what I wrote yesterday because two nouns are not connected by “to”, but “de”.

1. Satou-san wa Nijuu Roku sai de, Dokushin desu.

Where,

– Nijuu Roku sai = Twenty-six years old

– Dokushin = Single (currently don’t marry)

“Nijuu Roku sai” consists of the number twenty-six and the quantifier for year-old, which can be regarded as a noun to tell you age.

“Dokushin” is a noun. It is not a Na-adjective because we hardly say “Dokushin na Hito” (Hito is “person”. Remember yesterday’s definition of Na-adjective), but we say “Dokushin no Hito”.

If both “Nijuu Roku sai” and “Dokushin” are nouns, would it be okay to say as below?

<WRONG> Satou-san wa Nijuu Roku sai to Dokushin desu.

The answer is NO, you cannot say “Nijuu Roku sai to Dokushin desu”. It should be “Nijuu Roku sai de, Dokushin desu”.

Why is “Nijuu Roku sai to Dokushin desu” wrong, despite of juxtaposing two nouns?

Look at an example that is using “to” to juxtapose two nouns.

2. Satou-san no Asa-gohan wa Pan to Gyuunyuu desu. (Sato-san’s breakfast is bread and milk.)

In this example, there are two things, bread and milk, to be a breakfast.  In other words, the breakfast consists of two things. It is not like the breakfast is bread, and at the same time, the breakfast is also milk.

Then look at sentence”1″ again;

1. Satou-san wa Nijuu Roku sai de, Dokushin desu.

Sato-san is twenty-six years old. and at the same time, Sato-san is also single. The subject doesn’t consist of two things, but the subject has two aspects. 

Therefore, you can think the sentence “1” came from the following two sentences;

3. Satou-san wa Nijuu Roku sai desu. Soshite, Satou-san wa Dokushin desu.

=>   Satou-san wa Nijuu Roku sai <de>, Dokushin desu.

I guess Japanese teacher would have several different renditions about this “de” in the sentence “1”. Once I saw a Japanese teacher tried to explain this as a case particle “de” on his blog. Someone may say it is the conjunctive particle “de”. I may be wrong but my guess is that this “de” is the continuative form* of auxiliary verb “da”. 

Quiz: When you use two nouns parallelly in one sentence, which fits in the following sentences; to or de?

Q1 : Satou-san wa Nihonjin { to or de } Daigakusei desu.

Q2 : Asoko ni Satou-san { to or de } Suzuki-san ga Imasu.

Answers will be shown tomorrow.

*連用形 which is the form when another conjugation word follows behind.

This post was written with reference to the exercise A4 on Section 16 of “Minna no Nihongo (2^nd Edition)” published by “3A Corporation”