i form in 吐く息一つにも生命が宿り


I've recently bought a Japanese scroll, for decoration, with a famous quote
from _The Last Samurai_ :

> 吐く息一つにも生命が宿り

But I think this is incorrect: in the film this was part of a speech, and
there was another phrase after, so of course it finish in "り". But if I'm
going write this as a single phrase shouldn't I end it in "る"? So it should
be:

> 吐く息一つにも生命が宿る

Am I correct?




A phrase ending in `-i` (連用形) is an expression in its own right, not
necessarily wrong. Of course, whether it is appropriate to use it in a certain
situation is another question. Yes, it is "incomplete" as a sentence, but may
not be "incomplete" in the way you think.

If you put it in English, it'd be like "life dwells in (each) a breath you
breathe out, and", which would be felt quite truncated. But grammar-wise, it
is merely another form in the verb's paradigm in Japanese, as if the
difference between "I walk" and "I walk **ed** ". Taking another example, A
novel _Brightness Falls from the Air_ by James Tiptree Jr. has a translated
title 輝くもの天より堕ち, which is, by meaning, "brightness falls from the heavens,
and", but grammatically comparable to "brightness's having fallen from the
heavens" or "when brightness falls from the heavens". These English phrases
are not "complete sentences" either, but _are_ self-contained enough to be a
title by themselves. It might sound like a brain twist because a piece of
grammar, whose form is parallel to those English while carrying the Japanese
meaning, is unavailable in English, but it is a basic device in Japanese.




If this is a partial quote from a longer sentence, you should not try to alter
it, anyway.

In addition, ending a sentence with an i-form (stem) or a te-form is not
necessarily a mistake. Making a "partial" sentence and not saying everything
is a not-so-uncommon technique in poetry/lyrics, and doing so can leave room
for the imagination. For example, one could name a song as 聖なる夜に雪は降り instead
of 聖なる夜に雪は降る; this is not very common, but the former can look more dramatic.

It happens also in casual speech. See [でございまして in this
sentence?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/54376/5010) and [What exactly
is this でね construction?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/11950/5010)

