Compound Sentences: Verb Questions?

[Greenneutron]

Ok, trying to see if I understand this because even in English grammar gives me a headache.

So in English if you are stringing together nouns or stringing together verbs it works pretty much the same;
There are chairs and tables in the kitchen.
Or
He was running and screaming something about bees.

Japanese though there are separate particles for each right?

Nouns seem pretty straight forward I think.

男と犬はボールを遊ぶ。

Tell me where I'm wrong there though if I am of course!

Verbs... You make them past tense and drop the end bit and add て　or で depending on whether what you dropped was た　or だ？　　So you'd get something like:

三熊はテーベルに着きまして、粥を食べました。

Thanks in advance.


-Jason

[retropunk]

You're correct that you should use the te-form, but your formation is incorrect. AFAIK, there's no real interesting way of going into te-form other than memorizing it via a song or something similar.

For example, taberu is tabete. Ru-verbs just drop the ru and go to te.
U-verbs are differ on the last syllable.

- u, tsu, ru -> tte
- mu, bu, nu -> nde
- ku -> ite
- gu -> ide
- su -> shite

Some irregular conjugations
suru -> shite
kuru -> kite
iku -> itte

[Greenneutron]

Oops double post sorry.

[Greenneutron]

Thanks Retropunk. Looks like I've got some memorization to do hehe. And oh! It's the te form. I was wrong, because the resource I was using did not explain that clearly. So I guess because of that there's only 1 form of it per verb right? Because there's no formal version of the te form?

So it would be,

三熊はテーベルに着いて、粥を食べました。 ?

Only the verbs that are the 'and' ones go to the te form, and then the one at the end is the tense of the sentence as a whole?

ありがとうございます。

[retropunk]

Er, I just now realize that I was looking at your example in polite past and thinking of te-form. I guess that threw me off for a bit. In this case, I think it's very similar for verbs, but not so much for adjectives. My apologies.

There are tenses used for te-form, but my grammar isn't advanced enough to know what these are for. However, you can use the last verb for the tense and formality.

[QuackingShoe]

Essentially the 'te' form (連用形 + 接続助詞テ) is used to continue a sentence to another verb instead of predicating it. One application of this is also to lead into an auxiliary verb (補助動詞), such as when you say things like 行っている.

The 連用形 (conjunctive form, 'i-stem,' 'masu-stem,' etc) may be used to continue a sentence without predicating as well, as the Japanese name sortof implies. But it can not lead into a 補助動詞 in the way that it can with て. Also, comparing 連用形 to 連用形 + 接続助詞テ, the latter gives each verb (and it's clause) more equal weight than the former does.

Finally, yes, the final verb determines the tense for the whole sentence.

Edit: Oh. Also, the reason that 連用形 + テ doesn't, well, *look* like 連用形 + テ is due to euphonic changes over time and spelling revisions to match them. As you know, 着き is the 連用形 ('masu stem') of 着く. So, the 'te' is technically 着きて, and the 'ta' (past) is 着きた. However, again, euphonic changes have made them 着いて and 着いた, but grammatically they are still 連用形 + something.
The only godan verb class that has remained the same is さ. 話す's 連用形 is 話し, and it joins up to become 話して and 話した.