Difference between もせずに and もしないで?

I found this question on another Japanese learning website.

患者は、昨夜水差しからじかに水を飲もうとして、手がすべり、水差しを落して割ってしまったのだと言った。看護婦はぶつぶつ言いながら、前の破片を片づけ _______ 、新しい水差しをとりに行った。
(1)もせずに
(2)もしなくて
(3)はしないで
(4)もしないで

The answer is 4, but I don’t understand what would be wrong with 1. Can someone explain it to me?

3 Likes

I think the question you have to ask yourself is why would you want to use the more formal and stiff/written sounding せずに over the more tonally fitting しないで? It isn’t a matter of grammatical correctness but just what sounds more natural given the rest of the text.

4 Likes

If you look at the Bunpro pages for ずに and ないで, you will see that their registers are listed as 硬い and 一般 respectively. So the question becomes: Can you identify when a text is 硬い?

2 Likes

Haha, this means I’m tone deaf :joy:

2 Likes