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Is there a difference between these two sentences

昨日はビールを飲んでパイを食べました。

昨日はビールを飲みパイを食べました。

More generally, when should I choose one form over the other?

Eddie Kal
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user3856370
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2 Answers2

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The conjunctive form (aka pre-ます form) sounds more dry/learned/erudite/scholarly/formal. I hate all of those adjectives to describe it, but I think you know what I mean. It's of a higher register than the て form.

Kyle
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EDIT:

So it seems my original answer was incorrect. For the semantics of ～て linkage, please see this article (many thanks to @snailboat).

Regarding the actual question, I believe verb stems and ～て are very similar (perhaps interchangeable) in terms of semantics. However, according to my textbook (titled Tobira: Gateway to Advanced Japanese Learning through Content and Multimedia) and Kyle's answer, the verb stem is associated with formality and as such, it is more often seen in formal writing.

If you would like to imply or emphasize the ordering of a sequence of activities, a ~てから construct can be used (there are other options too).

朝【あさ】ご飯【はん】を食【た】べてテレビを見【み】ました。
"subject ate breakfast and watched TV. (in no particular order)"

朝【あさ】ご飯【はん】を食【た】べテレビを見【み】ました。
"subject ate breakfast and watched TV. (in no particular order)"

朝【あさ】ご飯【はん】を食【た】べてからテレビを見【み】ました。
"after eating breakfast, subject watched TV."

Original (Incorrect!) Answer

The first sentence:

昨日はビールを飲んでパイを食べました。

implies that you drank beer, and then ate pie.

On the other hand, the second sentence:

昨日はビールを飲みパイを食べました。

does not imply anything about the order in which you performed the two actions. It could be translated as "drank beer and ate pie", or "ate pie and drank beer".

In other words, using ~て to join sentences implies temporal ordering. As a result, it is usually used to convey a sequence of actions, whether they take place in the past, present, or future.

See this answer

Eddie Kal
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seafood258
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    ～て does not _always_ imply sequential actions, it is also used for concurrent actions and states. It is rather vague. If you want to express temporal ordering without fail, you can use ～たら form, or 後. – firtree Apr 15 '15 at 22:47
  • @firtree I see. I suppose I misunderstood. Most of the examples I had seen seemed to emphasize the ordering of the actions (朝ご飯を食べて、シャワーを浴びて、学校に行きました。), though I suppose I've also come across many cases where it was used simply to join two sentences. Are the ～て forms and verb stems interchangeable then? Also, I've heard that verb stems are more commonly used in writing. Would you say that is true? – seafood258 Apr 15 '15 at 22:57
  • I am a beginner myself, so I can only say that I've heard the same. For examples, I've heard only ～て to join sentences, and verb stems to make compound verbs. But I didn't learn the written-style examples, only the spoken-style ones. – firtree Apr 15 '15 at 23:22
  • @firtree I see. Would you say that ～て CAN be used to imply temporal ordering though (as opposed to "could be interpreted as", especially with sequences of three or more actions)? As far as I know, not even ～たら expresses this without fail, and is more often used in an "if ~ then ~" construct (for example, ねこだったら、どうしますか). – seafood258 Apr 16 '15 at 03:28
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    Recommended reading: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hasegawa/TE-Linkage/TE-linkage.html –  Apr 16 '15 at 08:38
  • @seafood258 Yes, ～て _can_ be used to imply temporal ordering. Unfortunately, all those forms are vague for us westerners. ～て can be "and" and "then", ～たら can be "then" and "if ~ then ~", and there are ～ば、と、が, and verb stems to expless those meanings... Easy to get lost. I hope some day I'll just get used to that all, and it will just sound natural. – firtree Apr 16 '15 at 15:52
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    @snailboat Cool paper! Do you have a PDF version of it, for easier reading and printing? P.S. I've found it myself, it's http://hasegawa.berkeley.edu/Papers/TE.pdf – firtree Apr 16 '15 at 15:57
  • @snailboat Thanks! ^_^ Great read, and from a professor at my own university! I've edited my answer to reference the article, and in response to confirmation from Kyle regarding verb stems. – seafood258 Apr 16 '15 at 19:20
  • @firtree I understand, thanks for your feedback! – seafood258 Apr 16 '15 at 19:29
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    Straight out of that Berkeley link: "It is frequently claimed in the literature that one of the major uses of TE-linkage is to express temporal sequence or consecutiveness . . . . In this section, it is argued to the contrary that temporal sequence [] cannot be expressed by TE-linkage. " – Kyle Apr 17 '15 at 05:20
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    @Kyle Yes, I read the article. I hope my answer doesn't still imply that.. In any case, I do admittedly support your answer (and voted accordingly). – seafood258 Apr 17 '15 at 19:14
  • Oh no problem. I wasn't commenting on anything you said; I was just pulling out a relevant quote for OP after I went to look out of curiosity myself. – Kyle Apr 21 '15 at 03:08