4.3. MORE PARTICLES 191
”while”, but this is typically more confusing than helpful because of the
way Japanese clauses are ordered (the most important clause coming last):
”(I) ate dinner while watching the TV.”The second part, , is thedominantaction here,
which is why it comes last. In English, however, we tend to list the dom-
inant action first, mentioning the other thing we’re doing almost as an af-
terthought.
On a timing note, implies that the two actions are roughly
of equal duration, and we cannot use it for something like ”I did some
shopping while visiting Tokyo today”. Instead, the particle is used
for this kind of momentary simultaneous action, if a particle is used at all.
Rather, usually a continuative is used instead, such as:
”I went to Tokyo (and) did (some) shopping (there).”In addition to the obvious interpretation, can also be used tomean ’but’ or ’even though’, especially when paired with the noun
,
”unfortunate”:
”I’m sorry, but maĴers are not that simple.”- simultaneous actionPerforming one act during another
Like , comes after verbs in
or directly after verbal
adjectives and nouns, but unlike , it does not claim two actions to
be perfectly synchronous. dominant/subordinateInstead, the verb in
- indicates the longer verb action, with the sentence finalising
verb indicating the shorter one. This might seem odd, since it might seem
to contradict the practice of puĴing the most important part last, but ac-
tually the short action is dominant: since the long verb action is going on