Gonna give #microblogging in m/LearnJapanese a shot. I would also like to preface this by saying it's possible some information may be incorrect or missing context. I'm human, after all. That said, I'm open to learning, refining, and adding onto this over time.
Now for the topic I'd like to discuss, one thing I find fascinating about #Japanese is their use of #subjectOmission. Once a subject is established, Japanese sentences commonly stop referring to the subject in subsequent sentences and utterances. For example,
猫は食べています。後で、(猫は)寝ます。
"As for the cat... (It) is eating. Later, (it) will sleep."
Both sentences technically omit the the subject that is doing the verb, and instead use the zero pronoun to refer to the cat.
Whereas in #English for example, if we were to #translate the Japanese sentence as literally as we could, we would get:
Cat eating. Later, sleep.
Breaking this down, the sentence "Cat eating" is #grammaticallyIncorrect. Eating is a #stativeVerb, which expresses a state or condition. In English, stative verbs require #auxiliaryVerbs for a sentence construction to be grammatically correct. We also drop "is" in the literal translation is due to the differences in what a #subjectMarker particle is as opposed to the notion of "is", which is both an auxiliary verb and an #intransitiveVerb. English also requires a subject, and due to this, "Later, sleep" would be considered grammatically incorrect.
Anyways, I think subject-omission is a pretty interesting aspect of #language and #communication as it streamlines what is said and written, and allows for more concise and efficient transmission of #knowledge and #information. Thanks for reading.
@daredevil I'm still a beginner, but doesn't it go even further than that? The example sentences「猫は食べています。後で寝ます。」 might be more literally translated as "As for the cat... (It) is eating. Later, (it) will sleep." Both sentences technically omit the the subject that is doing the verb, and instead use the zero pronoun to refer to the cat.