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> 何年か前の話ですが、 ディズニーランドで子供がトイレに入って、出てくるのを外で待ってると、
> トイレ内で髪を染められ、服も着替えさせられて子供が誘拐された、ディズニーランドでは 出入り口を全て封鎖して、犯人が見つかった **とか** 、
> そのまま子供がいなくなっちゃった **とか** 結構聞きましたが、 その話本当ですか？

Hello, again, I'm translating colloquial japanese. Why did the author of this
post use とか? Why didn't he use て? Is there a special connection between the
two verbs 見つかった andいなくなっちゃった? I don't understand whether they are connected to
結構聞きました or not (there's a space in the original text before 結構). Also, how can
I translate 結構 here?
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question
grammar translation particles syntax
translation: とか and 結構
とか here means an indefinite list. 結構 here means to have heard these things a
lot (see some of the synonymous constructions here
<http://thesaurus.weblio.jp/content/%E7%B5%90%E6%A7%8B>)

so

> 犯人が見つかったとか、

= things like they caught the culprit

> そのまま子供がいなくなっちゃったとか

= or things like the children disappeared

> 結構聞きましたが、 その話本当ですか？

are things that I often heard, but is this story true?
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answer
`結構` is used here in sense 4 [from
EDICT](http://jisho.org/word/%E7%B5%90%E6%A7%8B):

>   4. quite; reasonably; fairly; tolerably
>

`とか` could be roughly translated as "things like". On the more analytic level,
it is a combination of the quoting `と` and `か`. I.e., here the author is
quoting the things they've heard:

> I've heard plenty of stories like "they found the culprit" or "The child
> just disappeared like that", but is [any of them] true?

`て` could have been used if it was describing the actual sequence of events,
but since here it's hearsay it doesn't really work. Also, it seems that "they
found the culprit" and "The child just disappeared like that" are two
conflicting storylines and not sequential events, so `て` doesn't work here.
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answer
Because the author heard the story from another source, he doesn't remember
what he was told word for word. He uses とか to explain that that's the
_general_ idea he understood from the source, which may (/not) have told him
the complete and detailed story behind how they found the offender, and how
the children were already gone by then.

I don't know of any special connection between the two verbs.

The space before 結構 is like a colloquial '。' or '，' . The author just wants to
state a break in his speech.

> 結構聞きましたが

I'd try something like "I've been asking around but..."
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answer