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In [Tae Kim's Guide](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/compound)
there is a conversation that goes like this:

> Tom: 時間がなかった。
>
> Mary: だからパーティーに行かなかったの？

I was wondering is 「だから」 actually a short-form of 「それだから」 ?

Similarly, in the sentence 「なので、友達に会う時間がない。」, is 「なので」 actually a short-form
for 「それなので」 ?

I was thinking does the 「それ」in 「それだから」have anything to do with the 「それ」in
[this question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/713/what-is-the-
difference-between-and/717#717). Does the 「それ」in「それだから」imply that the "thing"
is not known by the speaker but by the listener?
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2011-09-20T01:52:13.397
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2011-12-29T05:41:06.383
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
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question
grammar syntax formal-nouns
Is 「なので」actually a short-form for「それなので」?
This question is difficult to answer without a definition of what is and isn't
a "short-form", but here are some thoughts.

なので and だから (and けれど, が, etc.) are in modern Japanese able to function as
fully independent sentence-beginning lexemes. They are not "short forms" of
そうなので etc. any more than 書いた is a "short form" of 書いたり/書いたる. (However, they
are obviously _etymologically_ related to clause-final usage of なので and だから,
just as 書いた is etymologically related to 書いたり/書いたる.)

As evidence, consider that as discussed in comments in many cases it is not
possible to substitute a "long form" without changing the implication
somewhat. Here are some intuitive observations about my own idiolect (note
that I am not a native speaker).

  * それだからパーティーに行かなかったの？, そうだからパーティーに行かなかったの？, etc. are not at all equivalent to だからパーティーに行かなかったの？ Note that だから is a couple hundred years old and was sometimes written with kanji making it clear that it was not considered short for anything, e.g. 然から. (That's from a mid-19th century example in 日本国語大辞典.)
  * Sentences beginning with が can always be rewritten だが or ですが, but again, not それだが or そうだが in most cases.
  * なので strikes me as the least resistant to a そうなので rewrite -- but still pretty resistant, and more to the point, such rewrites sound awkward and unnatural even if technically allowed.

And here are some counterarguments to the above:

  * First, the prescriptive argument: なので or が have to imply something before them because なので and が can't appear independently. This is a "just because" sort of argument similar to "You have to use 'were' for the subjunctive case in English; 'If I was' is just plain wrong." I do not put much stock in this sort of thinking (although there are times when a certain strictly defined style is required, and this should not be ignored) but I include it for completeness. I do know if there is any prescriptive objection to だから or です.
  * Second, the "invisible structure" argument: these words don't actually include a それ or a そう, but that at some level their use implies something equivalent to それ or そう in the structure, and therefore, the "full form" is "there" in some sense. I am not sure if any school of linguistic analysis would actually make such an argument in this case, but I include it as a possibility.
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2011-09-21T04:40:35.050
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2011-09-21T04:40:35.050
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answer