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I am currently trying to translate various song lyrics from Japanese for practice and would like to stay as close as possible to the original meaning of the sentences. Currently, I'm trying to translate the well-known シティポップ song 「真夜中のドア～Stay with me」 by 松原みき. The line I'm asking about is the following:

真夜中のドアをたたき　帰らないでと泣いた

From what I understand these are two separate sentences, which I would translate as

In the dead of night I was hitting (your) door
'Come back' I cried

What confuses me is the first sentence: Since 叩き (=hitting, beating) is a noun the sentence is missing a だ, but I guess that's just because it's spoken Japanese. However, why did the writer choose to describe the action of banging on the door with a noun instead of using a verb: 真夜中のドアを叩いてた. Is there a difference in meaning between these two? Have I simply translated the text incorrectly? Strictly speaking, "AをB だ" should probably be translated as A = B, but then I can't make any sense of the text. You can listen and read the lyrics here.

Eddie Kal
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jazzinsilhouette
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    Long story short, this is a verbal form called the 連用形, not a noun, which is actually *more* common in writing or formal speech than casual speech despite your seeming impression [て versus combining-form for joining clauses](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/23789/%e3%81%a6-versus-combining-form-for-joining-clauses) – Angelos Jul 15 '22 at 22:33
  • @Angelos: thanks for your help. so this means it's just the verb 叩く shifted to its い-stem and the purpose of this form here is to connect both clauses? i.e. it more or less work just like connecting clauses via the て-form, but probably has a more formal ring to it? – jazzinsilhouette Jul 15 '22 at 23:01

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