Meaning of からと？


The following is a sentence in 新完全マスターN2.

> 高い服をもったいない **からと** 着ないでいるのは、それこそもったいないというものだ。

I don't understand what is happening with からと, or how the meaning would be any
different if the と were removed like this:

> 高い服をもったいない **から** 着ないでいるのは、それこそもったいないというものだ。

What is the function of the と here?




This is a quotative と, and when used with から like this the difference in
meaning is often quite subtle. In this case it's quoting the phrase
「もったいないから」as the justification for 着ない. It's essentially equivalent to saying

> 高い服を「もったいないから」と言って着ないでいるのは、それこそもったいないというものだ。

However since it's used with と alone (without the 言って or the quotation marks)
it's not a direct quote indicating that someone actually said the quoted
phrase, but an indirect quote indicating a statement that the person might be
thinking or feeling as their justification for not wearing the clothes.

In the end, the resulting meaning is pretty close to what you would get
without including the と at all, but the nuance and flow of the sentence feels
subtly different. In this sentence, the speaker evidently doesn't fully agree
that it is もったいない to wear the expensive clothes, since he's arguing against
that line of thought, so it feels more natural to treat the もったいないから as a
quoted opinion of the hypothetical owner of the clothes, rather than
presenting it as a plain から statement which sort of implies it's a
justification the speaker himself is providing.

Also, in this particular case, separating out the もったいないから from the rest of
the sentence as a quote makes the sentence easier to parse - it helps to
clarify that 高い服を and もったいないから are both separate elements modifying the
着ないでいる, rather than being connected to each other somehow. I'm not sure if
高い服をもったいないから着ないでいる… is strictly ungrammatical, but it sounds like quite an
awkward construction that would probably be better avoided (My first instinct
would be to replace the を with a が, so that the first two elements _are_
connected, though awkwardly this would change the meaning of the sentence
somewhat). The use of the the quotative と makes the existing construction
perfectly natural.




This is a quotative と, and when used with から like this the difference in
meaning is often quite subtle. In this case it's quoting the phrase
「もったいないから」as the justification for 着ない. It's essentially equivalent to saying

> 高い服を「もったいないから」と言って着ないでいるのは、それこそもったいないというものだ。

However since it's used with と alone (without the 言って or the quotation marks)
it's not a direct quote indicating that someone actually said the quoted
phrase, but an indirect quote indicating a statement that the person might be
thinking or feeling as their justification for not wearing the clothes.

In the end, the resulting meaning is pretty close to what you would get
without including the と at all, but the nuance and flow of the sentence feels
subtly different. In this sentence, the speaker evidently doesn't fully agree
that it is もったいない to wear the expensive clothes, since he's arguing against
that line of thought, so it feels more natural to treat the もったいないから as a
quoted opinion of the hypothetical owner of the clothes, rather than
presenting it as a plain から statement which sort of implies it's a
justification the speaker himself is providing.

Also, in this particular case, separating out the もったいないから from the rest of
the sentence as a quote makes the sentence easier to parse - it helps to
clarify that 高い服を and もったいないから are both separate elements modifying the
着ないでいる, rather than being connected to each other somehow. I'm not sure if
高い服をもったいないから着ないでいる… is strictly ungrammatical, but it sounds like quite an
awkward construction that would probably be better avoided (My first instinct
would be to replace the を with a が, so that the first two elements _are_
connected, though awkwardly this would change the meaning of the sentence
somewhat). The use of the the quotative と makes the existing construction
perfectly natural.

