ていく Japanese Grammar Lesson
Grammar Type: Auxiliary Verb (Group 1)
Essential Meaning: Continue ~ing / Keep on ~ing / Continue getting ~er (i.e. some action continues or some state continues to change)
Construction:
- Verb て-Form + 行く
- E.g. 読んで行く [Continue on reading]
- E.g. 寒くなって行く [Continue getting colder]
Notes:
- ていく (て行く in kanji) represents some action that continues on from a particular point in time or a state that continues changing from a particular point in time. It is analogous to “Continue ~ing” or “Keep on ~ing” in English.
- て行く can represent an action or state that continues from the present, or it can represent an action or state that continues from a specified point in the past. .
- E.g Continuation from the present: これから寒くなって行く。[From now on, it will continue to get colder.]
- E.g. Continuation from a point in the past: そのころから日本の経済は強くなって行った。 [From that point on, Japan’s economy continued to get stronger.]
- Sometimes て行く and Verb て-Form + 行く look identical, but they can be differentiated through context.
- E.g. 毎日会社にバスに乗って行く。[Ever day, I ride the bus to work.] Here, 乗って行く represents two distinct actions (i.e. boarding and then going) rather than one continuing action of boarding. It would be nonsensical to say that one “continues on boarding the bus”. Therefore, this is an example of the て-Form + 行く.
- E.g. あのレストランでコーヒーを飲んで行きましょう。[Let’s get a coffee at that restaurant and then go.] This sentence is an example of て-form + 行く for the same reason as above. The speaker is saying “Let’s drink, and then let’s go” rather than “Let’s continue on drinking“.
- When て行く describes a changing state, it can be replaced by て来る. The difference is that て行く is more objective and impersonal. while て来る involves the speaker personally.
- E.g. これから暖かくなって行きますよ。[It will become warmer from now on.] This sentence comes across as an objective statement about the changing weather.
- E.g. そのころから日本の経済は強くなって来た。[From that time, Japan’s economy began to grow stronger.] Due to the presence of て来る, this sentence implies that the speaker has some personal connection with the growing Japanese economy.
Example Sentences:
これからは寒くなって行く。[From now on, it will keep on getting colder.]
これからは毎日本を一冊読んで行くつもりです。[From now on, I intend to continue reading a book per day.]
これから暖かくなって行きますよ。[From now on, it will continue getting warmer.]
そのころから日本の経済は強くなって行った。[From that time, Japan’s economy continued to strengthen.]
分からないことをノートに書いて行った。[I continued writing the things I didn’t understand in my notebook.]
WILD Examples:
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