Conjunctions using stems, and its conjugation

Question

While working through the Tobira textbook, I came to a grammar point Chapter 1 - #5. This stated verb stems and adverbial い-adj form could be used to combine sentences as in:

1. 昨日は友達とレストランで晩ご飯を食べ、その後、映画を見に行った。

2. この地方は冬は雪が多く、夏はとても暑い。

It doesn't give English translations but I take these sentences to mean:

1. Yesterday I ate dinner with my friend at a restaurant, and after that we went to go watch a movie.

2. In this region, the winters have a lot of snow and the summers are very hot.

My question is whether this grammar structure can only be used with non-conjugated phrases. This mostly concerns negative vs. affirmative sense, since the 1st example shows that the first phrase will have the same past/non-past sense as the following phrase.

For example, (following the pattern of い-adj --> て-form w/out て) do these make sense/sound idiomatic:

3. 姉は高くなく、まだ早くジョギングができます。

My sister is not tall, and still she can jog quickly

4. 今日お昼ご飯を食べなく、4時よりおなかがペコペコになってしまいました。

Today I did not eat lunch, and from 4 o-clock on I became hungry

If these do not make sense, is there a similar grammar structure to use? Or would just a word with the opposite sense be used instead?

Answer 1

You're right. That's how you conjugate ない forms, and I find nothing wrong with the following examples that you provided:

3. 姉は高くなく、まだ早くジョギングができます。

My sister is not tall, and still she can jog quickly

4. 今日お昼ご飯を食べなく、4時よりおなかがペコペコになってしまいました。

Today I did not eat lunch, and from 4 o-clock on I became hungry

That being said, please do note that this form is more common in written Japanese than in spoken Japanese. As far as I know, patterns like い-adj --> て-form are more common in spoken Japanese.

To include Mindful's correction, the last option is better written as

4. 今日お昼ご飯を食べないで、4時よりおなかがペコペコになってしまいました。