96051
I stumbled upon the following dialogue line in a game:

> おや、連絡かね。手早く確認が仕事の基本だよ

What puzzles me is the adverbial form of 手早い being used, despite there being
no verb (or any other part of speech it could modify) I could discern in the
sentence. It would make the most sense to me that the word it modifies should
be 確認, but in that case I would rather expect something like "手早く確認するのが…" or
maybe "手早い確認が…", if these are correct ways to phrase it. Is it really 確認
that's being modified and what is the grammar at play here?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-30T10:41:55.453
96050
2022-08-30T15:43:02.423
51521
question
grammar adverbs
Adverb modifying a noun?
This 確認 is not a noun but a verb with する(の) omitted. Here, 手早く確認 is working as
something like a slogan that could have been in quotes. So you can read it
like:

> 「手早く確認！」が仕事の基本だよ。  
>  "Check it right away!" is the basic part of working.

Note that a suru-verb can work as a short imperative without する or しろ (e.g.,
"起立!" = "Stand up!", "整列!" = "Fall in!"). You can even use しろ explicitly and
say 手早く確認しろが仕事の基本だよ. This can safely be parsed without visible quotation
marks.

手早く確認するのが仕事の基本だよ and 手早い確認が仕事の基本だよ are also perfectly correct, but the
original sentence would sound a little more impressive because the 手早く確認 part
sounds like it's urging you to take an action.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-08-30T12:18:28.663
96051
2022-08-30T15:43:02.423
2022-08-30T15:43:02.423
5010
5010
96050
answer