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Consider:

  * XにYで行く 
    * 学校に自転車 **で** 行く 
      * "Go to school by bicycle" ("means/instrumentality" interpretation)
      * "Is* bicycle and go to school" (Questionable?) (Verb conjunctive interpretation)
  * XにTraversal Verb-て行く 
    * 学校に歩い **て** 行く 
      * "Go to school by walking" ("means/instrumentality" interpretation)
      * "Walk and go to school" (Verb conjunctive interpretation)

The leads me to ask:

  * Does て-form implicitly contain the で of means?
  * Or is the で of means a て-form of something *(the copula だ perhaps?) 

There seems to be something common between て-form and で of means.
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2012-09-18T15:28:53.887
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2012-09-18T16:08:44.820
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question
grammar て-form particle-で
Equivalence of Traversal Verb + て and で of Means/Instrumentality
Simply, yes, `で` is just the `〜て` form of `だ`. You could get into a whole
discussion on this, but we can see the parallels between them.

### Connecting

>   * イ-adjective: 大きく **て** 強い → Big and strong
>   * ナ-adjective: きれい **で** 頭がいい → Pretty and smart
>

### Means/instrumentality

>   * Verbs: 行っ **て** くる → Go and come back ("Come back by means of (first)
> going")
>   * Nouns: お箸【はし】 **で** 食べる → Eat by using chopsticks
>

As I said, this is an overly-simplistic answer, but I don't have time right
now to jump into all of it.
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2012-09-18T16:02:44.793
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answer