Recently I read the very enjoyable short story “麦本三歩は今日が好き” by 住野よる in the literary magazine 小説幻冬 (Dec 2016 edition). I even translated a short excerpt of it into English here.
There was one line of the story whose grammar I just couldn’t figure out, and I thought that it was either some strange pattern I had never seen before, or just a typo. While I could have used something like Japanese Language StackExchange to get some help, I decided to write the publisher directly (in Japanese).
Here is the line, from page 44:
も、熱さに一度指を放してしまってから一度フォークにひっかけてティーバッグをお茶の中で上下させ、成分を十分に溶け込ませてからフォークごと流し台に置いておく。
The sentence is a bit long and complex, but you may have picked up on the weird part–the “も” at the very beginning. I double checked and the character before this was a period. My first guess was that this was a typo for “もう”.
Here is the answer from their editorial department:
→普通に書けば、「指でつまむも、熱さに一度放した」ですね。
つまり「指でつまんだけれども、熱いので、一度放した」という意味です。
「つまむ」と「も」の間に、「。」を入れることで、
作者独自の言葉のリズムを産み出しています。
The summary of this is that the も is usually connected to the previous sentence, rendering the pattern “〜するも” which translates to something like “〜したけれも”. However, the author apparently added a period before the も in order to create a unique sense of rhythm.
Looking at the previous sentence before the “も” we see “。。。フークで持ち上げてから指でつまむ。”, which means that this:
。。。フークで持ち上げてから指でつまむ。も、熱さに一度指を放してしまって。。。
effectively means this:
。。。フークで持ち上げてから指でつまんだけれども、熱さに一度指を放してしまって。。。
For beginner, or even intermediate students of Japanese this can be quite confusing, because a non-past verb tense (つまむ) is effectively being interpreted as a past verb tense (つまんだ). However, once you consider that Japanese verb tenses are generally a little more fluid than in English, this is a bit easier to accept. One manifestation of this how you may find a mix of past and non-past tenses in literature (even in the same paragraph) much more often than in English. (The phrase “ちょっとまった！” is another example, can you guess what it means?)
Now that I knew this was a variation of the ~するも (~suru mo) pattern, I searched for that and found this educational post in Japanese. (Note that you shouldn’t confuse this with “〜するのも” (~ suru no mo) where the verb is being treated as a noun. This would have a different, more straightforward meaning (ex: “日本に行くのもいい”, “It would also be good to go to Japan”)).
As is typical with posts asking about grammar explanations, there are some differing opinions, but overall I think there is some agreement that this is a literary expression that is used less frequently (if at all) in spoken speech. Also, as I talked about above, the 〜するも pattern can mean 〜したけれも, and the post also mentions meanings 〜したのに and 〜しても.
The topmost answer (No. 5) mentions something really interesting that I thought I would touch on here, which is that there are some people who advocate avoiding the use of “が” as a connecting particle (this is supposedly one of the reasons why 〜するも is preferred over が). The below examples were given:
・安いが、まずい
・安いが、うまい
In the first sentence, が has more of a connecting meaning, as in “It’s cheap and tastes bad.”
However, in the second sentence, it has more of a contrasting meaning, as in “It’s cheap, but tastes good.”
So, in summary, we see that the が particle can be used for two very different meanings (not to mention other common ones such as a subject marker which I am not addressing here). The poster of that answer mentions that this can “put a burden on the reader” and expresses his/her annoyance regarding its usage.
I vaguely remember learning that が had these double meanings a long time ago, but it’s good to know that some native speakers also struggle with the vagueness of this usage. Fortunately, I think most cases you can tell the purpose of が from the context, as in the above examples about cheap food.