An introduction to Japanese - Syntax, Grammar & Language

3.2. FURTHER INFLECTIONS 113

Special conjunctions:

Another construction that changes the meaning of the suffixed verb is the

• form. ( ) alone means ”to see”, but suffixed to forms,
  this construction meansto do ... to see what it’s likeorto do ... to see what
  happens:

”Won’t (you) try eating some sushi?”

Here a negative question is asked as a more polite way of offering

a suggestion, and the part stands for ”trying to eat, to see

what happens”. In this case, the ”to see what happens” is probably related

to ”seeing if you like it”.

”(I) tried to ride a bicycle, but that failed horribly.”

literally: ”but (it) was no good at all.”

Here, the act of riding a bicycle was tried to see what would happen,

but we can conclude from the remainder of the sentence that riding a bike

isn’t something reserved for this particular speaker.

3.2.4 Representative listing:

If, instead of chaining, you want to only list representative actions for which

order doesn’t maĴer, such as ”Today I read my book, played some video

games and walked the dog” in which you probably did all those things a

few times in no real order, then the form is of liĴle use. Instead, the clas-

sical helper verb is the one you want to be working with. This verb

has the following bases:

bases form

Just like , the of is used, and just like for and ,

contractions occur when used with verbs. However, unlike the