This post is about clarification on use of は after a “verb て form”, as I’m not a native speaker, haven’t studied in years, but also haven’t heard this form used or talked about in a long time.
Consider:
1)食って寝るのだ
2) 食っては寝るのだ
3) 食ったら寝るのだ
4) 食った後は寝るのだ
My intuition here is that のだ here does a lot of lifting into “this is a general thing that happens”, but other than 2) they seem to imply only a *personal* generalization, whereas 2) seems to be an assertion like “well of course we *all* get sleepy after eating”.
How accurate is this is? How common is (verbて)は(statement) in writing in speech?
2 comments
XてはY means “do X and then Y repeatedly”
like an author annoyed that they keep writing something and then throwing it away over and over:
書いては捨てる
so 食っては寝る is repeatedly eating and sleeping as a pattern
as for Xのだ that’s “it’s that X”, i.e. it’s an explanation
One thing you were asking that may not have been cleared up was the usage if “のだ” . This is going to be used for emphasis on the part of the sentence that the speaker wants to emphasize. 食べて、寝るのだ, I’m going to eat, and THEN I’m going to sleep.