~どこに書いてあるか探しながら読む why here is ながら-from?


Good day, I read in a Japanese textbook the following sentence:

> ものの歴史と良さについてどこに書いてあるか探しながら読む

The meaning is clear "search whether it's written [by somebody] somewhere
about merit and history of a thing and read it". But there are ながら-form is
using, what means that one at the same time is searching and reading what
he/she is supposed to find, how can it be?




This ながら-form itself is a very basic example of ながら meaning "while" or "as".
探しながら読む means "to read while searching ～" or "to read while trying to find ～".

Apparently you have failed to parse the sentence correctly.
ものの歴史と良さについてどこに書いてあるか (an embedded question) is the object of **only** 探す. The
object of 読む is not directly mentioned in this sentence, but it's clearly some
book or article. Basically this person is reading some long text and trying to
locate the exact page where this topic is discussed.

> ものの歴史と良さについてどこに書いてあるか探しながら読む。  
>  [I] read (the book) (while) trying to find (the page) where the history and
> the merit of things are written.




This ながら-form itself is a very basic example of ながら meaning "while" or "as".
探しながら読む means "to read while searching ～" or "to read while trying to find ～".

Apparently you have failed to parse the sentence correctly.
ものの歴史と良さについてどこに書いてあるか (an embedded question) is the object of **only** 探す. The
object of 読む is not directly mentioned in this sentence, but it's clearly some
book or article. Basically this person is reading some long text and trying to
locate the exact page where this topic is discussed.

> ものの歴史と良さについてどこに書いてあるか探しながら読む。  
>  [I] read (the book) (while) trying to find (the page) where the history and
> the merit of things are written.

