Japanese grammar
Encyclopedia
The Japanese language
has a regular agglutinative verb morphology, with both productive and fixed elements. In language typology, it has many features divergent from most European languages. Its phrases are exclusively head
-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching
. There are many such languages, but few in Europe. It is a topic-prominent language
.
, identifies several kinds of phrase. Each one has a head and possibly a modifier. The head of a phrase either precedes its modifier (head initial) or follows it (head final). Some of these phrase types, with the head marked in boldface, are:
Some languages are inconsistent in constituent order, having a mixture of head initial phrase types and head final phrase types. Looking at the preceding list, English for example is mostly head initial, but nouns follow the adjectives which modify them. Moreover, genitive phrases can be either head initial or head final in English. Japanese, by contrast, is the epitome of a head final language:
Head finality in Japanese sentence structure carries over to the building of sentences using other sentences. In sentences that have other sentences as some of their constituents, the subordinated sentences (relative clauses, for example), always precede what they refer to, since they are modifiers and what they modify has the syntactic status of phrasal head. Translating the phrase the man who was walking down the street into Japanese word order would be street down walking man. (Note that Japanese has no articles, and the different word order obviates any need for the relative pronoun who.)
Head finality prevails also when sentences are coordinated instead of subordinated. In the world's languages, it is common to avoid repetition between coordinated clauses by optionally deleting a constituent common to the two parts, as in Bob bought his mother some flowers and his father a tie, where the second bought is omitted. In Japanese, such "gapping" must precede in the reverse order: Bob mother for some flowers and father for tie bought. The reason for this is that in Japanese, sentences always end in a verb—the only exceptions being a few particles such as ka, ne, and yo. ka turns a statement into a question, while the other sentence-final particles express the speaker's attitude towards the statement.
Verbal nouns and nominal adjectives are in fact subcategories of noun, while i-adjectives are closely related to verbs.
The two inflected classes, verb and adjective, are closed class
es, meaning they do not readily gain new members. Instead, new and borrowed verbs and adjectives are conjugated periphrastically as verbal noun + suru (e.g. benkyō suru 'do studying = study') and adjectival noun + na. This is unusual from a Western viewpoint
, though one parallel is that new Basque verbs
are only formed periphrastically. It is also opposite to the situation with pronouns, which are closed classes in Western languages but open class
es in Japanese and some other East Asian languages
.
The conjugation
of i-adjectives has similarities to the conjugation of verbs, unlike Western languages where inflection of adjectives, where it exists, is more likely to have similarities to the declension
of nouns.
Japanese vocabulary has a large layer of Chinese loanwords, nearly all of which go back more than one thousand years, yet virtually none of them are verbs or "i-adjectives". However a few recent loanwords are sometimes playfully conjugated as verbs, for example English Google and double, whose Japanese transliterations end in -ru which happens to be the citation form
ending of Japanese verbs.
Verbal nouns are uncontroversially nouns, having only minor syntactic differences to distinguish them from pure nouns like 'mountain'. Nominal adjectives have more syntactic differences versus pure nouns, but they, too, are ultimately a subcategory of nouns.
The system of word classes in Japanese has yet another typologically unusual characteristic: the subclass of nominal adjectives is syntactically heterogeneous. It has its own subdivisions defined by the array of syntactic divergences they have versus the pure nouns.
pragmatics
, the term topic refers to what a section of discourse is about. At the beginning of a section of discourse, the topic is usually unknown, in which case it is usually necessary to explicitly mention it. As the discourse carries on, the topic need not be the grammatical subject of each new sentence.
Starting with Middle Japanese, the grammar evolved so as to explicitly distinguish topics from nontopics. This is done by two distinct particle
s (short words which do not change form). Consider the following pair of sentences:
Both sentences translate as "the sun rises". In the first sentence the sun (太陽 taiyō) is not a discourse topic—not yet; in the second sentence it now is a discourse topic. In linguistics (specifically, in discourse pragmatics) a sentence such as the second one (with wa) is termed a presentational sentence because its function in the discourse is to present sun as a topic, to "broach it for discussion". Once a referent has been established as the topic of the current monolog or dialog, then in (formal) modern Japanese its marking will change from wa to ga. To better explain the difference, the translation of the second sentence can be enlarged to "As for the sun, it rises" or "Speaking of the sun, it rises"; these renderings reflect a discourse fragment in which "the sun" is being established as the topic of an extended discussion.
is commonly omitted in Japanese, as in
The sentence literally expresses "went to Japan". Subjects are mentioned when a topic is introduced, or in situations where an ambiguity might result from their omission. The preceding example sentence would most likely be uttered in the middle of a discourse, where who it is that "went to Japan" will be clear from what has already been said (or written).
(文 bun), which are in turn composed of phrase
s (文節 bunsetsu), which are its smallest coherent components. Like Chinese
and classical Korean
, written Japanese does not typically demarcate words with spaces; its agglutinative nature further makes the concept of a word
rather different from words in English
. The listener identifies word divisions by semantic cues and a knowledge of phrase structure. Phrases have a single meaning-bearing word, followed by a string of suffix
es, auxiliary verb
s and particles
to modify its meaning and designate its grammatical role. In the following example, phrases are indicated by vertical bars:
Some scholars romanize
Japanese sentences by inserting spaces only at phrase boundaries (i.e., "taiyō-ga higashi-no sora-ni noboru"), treating an entire phrase as a single word. This represents an almost purely phonological conception of where one word ends and the next begins. There is some validity in taking this approach: phonologically
, the postpositional particles merge with the structural word that precedes them, and within a phonological phrase, the pitch can have at most one fall. Usually, however, grammarians adopt a more conventional concept of word (単語 tango), one which invokes meaning and sentence structure.
—also including fragments of words—which help to build the sentence in accordance with the grammar rules of the language. Lexical words include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and sometimes prepositions and postpositions, while grammatical words or word parts include everything else. The native tradition in Japanese grammar scholarship seems to concur in this view of classification. This native Japanese tradition uses the terminology jiritsugo (自立語), "independent words", for words having lexical meaning, and fuzokugo (付属語), "ancillary words", for words having a grammatical function.
Classical Japanese had some auxiliary verbs (i.e., they were independent words) which have become grammaticized in modern Japanese as inflectional suffixes, such as the past tense suffix -ta (which might have developed as a contraction of -te ari).
Traditional scholarship proposes a system of word classes differing somewhat from the above mentioned. The "independent" words have the following categories.
Ancillary words also divide into a nonconjugable class, containing grammatical particles (助詞 joshi) and counter words
(助数詞 josūshi), and a conjugable class consisting of auxiliary verbs (助動詞 jodōshi). There is not wide agreement among linguists as to the English translations of the above terms.
Reduplication for emphasis
Questions. In Japanese, questions are formed by adding the particle ka (or in colloquial speech, just by changing the intonation of the sentence).
Several auxiliary verbs, e.g., mitai, 'looks like it's'
On the basis of such constructions, Uehara (1998) finds that the copula is indeed an independent word, and that regarding the parameters on which i-adjectives share the syntactic pattern of verbs, the nominal adjectives pattern with pure nouns instead.
Similarly, Eleanor Harz Jorden considers this class of words a kind of nominal, not adjective, and refers to them as na-nominals in her textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language
.
, number
, or article
s (though the demonstrative その, sono, "that, those", is often translatable as "the"). Thus, specialists have agreed that Japanese noun
s are noninflecting
: 猫 neko can be translated as "cat", "cats", "a cat", "the cat", "some cats" and so forth, depending on context. However, as part of the extensive pair of grammatical systems that Japanese possesses for honorification (making discourse deferential to the addressee or even to a third party) and politeness, nouns too can be modified. Nouns take politeness prefixes (which have not been regarded as inflections): o- for native nouns, and go- for Sino-Japanese nouns. A few examples are given in the following table. In a few cases, there is suppletion
, as with the first of the examples given below, 'rice'. (Note that while these prefixes are almost always in Hiragana
— that is, as お o- or ご go — the kanji
御 is used for both o and go prefixes in formal writing.)
Lacking number, Japanese does not differentiate between count
and mass noun
s. (An English speaker learning Japanese would be well advised to treat Japanese nouns as mass nouns.) A small number of nouns have collective
s formed by reduplication
(possibly accompanied by voicing and related processes (rendaku
)); for example: hito 'person' and hitobito 'people'. Reduplication is not productive
. Words in Japanese referring to more than one of something are collectives, not plural
s. Hitobito, for example, means "a lot of people" or "people in general". It is never used to mean "two people". A phrase like edo no hitobito would be taken to mean "the people of Edo
", or "the population of Edo", not "two people from Edo" or even "a few people from Edo". Similarly, yamayama means "many mountains".
A limited number of nouns have collective forms that refer to groups of people. Examples include watashi-tachi, 'we'; anata-tachi, 'you (plural)'; bokura, 'we (less formal, more masculine)'. One uncommon personal noun, ware, 'I', or in some cases, 'you', has a much more common reduplicative collective form wareware 'we'.
The suffixes -tachi (達) and -ra (等) are by far the most common collectivizing suffixes. These are, again, not pluralizing suffixes: tarō-tachi does not mean "some number of people named Taro", but instead indicates the group including Taro. Depending on context, tarō-tachi might be translated into "Taro and his friends", "Taro and his siblings", "Taro and his family", or any other logical grouping that has Taro as the representative. Some words with collectives have become fixed phrases and (commonly) refer to one person. Specifically, kodomo 'child' and tomodachi 'friend' can be singular, even though -[t]omo and -[t]achi were originally collectivizing in these words; to unambiguously refer to groups of them, an additional collectivizing suffix is added: kodomotachi 'children' and tomodachitachi 'friends', though tomodachitachi is somewhat uncommon. Tachi is sometimes applied to inanimate objects, kuruma 'car' and kuruma-tachi, 'cars', for example, but this usage is colloquial and indicates a high level of anthropomorphisation and childlikeness, and is not more generally accepted as standard.
あたし atashi (female)
私 watashi (both)
俺 ore (male)
| 私 watashi
| 私 watakushi
|-
! second
| 君 kimi
お前 omae
手前 temae
貴様 kisama
| 貴方 anata
そちら sochira
| 貴方様 anata-sama
|-
! third
|colspan="3"| 彼 kare (male)
彼女 kanojo (female)
あいつ aitsu (pejorative)
|}
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
has a regular agglutinative verb morphology, with both productive and fixed elements. In language typology, it has many features divergent from most European languages. Its phrases are exclusively head
Head (linguistics)
In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head....
-final and compound sentences are exclusively left-branching
Branching (linguistics)
In linguistics, branching is the general tendency towards a given order of words within sentences and smaller grammatical units within sentences...
. There are many such languages, but few in Europe. It is a topic-prominent language
Topic-prominent language
A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N...
.
Word order: head final and left branching
The modern theory of constituent order ("word order"), usually attributed to Joseph GreenbergJoseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
, identifies several kinds of phrase. Each one has a head and possibly a modifier. The head of a phrase either precedes its modifier (head initial) or follows it (head final). Some of these phrase types, with the head marked in boldface, are:
- genitive phrase, i.e., noun modified by another noun ("the cover of the book", "the book's cover");
- noun governed by an adposition ("on the table", "underneath the table");
- comparison ("[X is] bigger than Y", i.e., "compared to Y, X is big").
- noun modified by an adjective ("black cat").
Some languages are inconsistent in constituent order, having a mixture of head initial phrase types and head final phrase types. Looking at the preceding list, English for example is mostly head initial, but nouns follow the adjectives which modify them. Moreover, genitive phrases can be either head initial or head final in English. Japanese, by contrast, is the epitome of a head final language:
- genitive phrase: neko no iro, cat GEN color = "the color (iro) of the cat (neko)";
- noun governed by an adposition: nihon ni, Japan in = "in Japan";
- comparison: Y yori ookii, Y than big = "bigger than Y";
- noun modified by an adjective: kuroi neko = "black cat".
Head finality in Japanese sentence structure carries over to the building of sentences using other sentences. In sentences that have other sentences as some of their constituents, the subordinated sentences (relative clauses, for example), always precede what they refer to, since they are modifiers and what they modify has the syntactic status of phrasal head. Translating the phrase the man who was walking down the street into Japanese word order would be street down walking man. (Note that Japanese has no articles, and the different word order obviates any need for the relative pronoun who.)
Head finality prevails also when sentences are coordinated instead of subordinated. In the world's languages, it is common to avoid repetition between coordinated clauses by optionally deleting a constituent common to the two parts, as in Bob bought his mother some flowers and his father a tie, where the second bought is omitted. In Japanese, such "gapping" must precede in the reverse order: Bob mother for some flowers and father for tie bought. The reason for this is that in Japanese, sentences always end in a verb—the only exceptions being a few particles such as ka, ne, and yo. ka turns a statement into a question, while the other sentence-final particles express the speaker's attitude towards the statement.
Word class system
Japanese has five major lexical word classes:- nouns
- verbal nouns (correspond to English gerunds like 'studying', 'jumping', which denote activities)
- nominal adjectives (called "adjectival nouns" by some scholars)
- verbs
- adjectives (so-called i-adjectives)
Verbal nouns and nominal adjectives are in fact subcategories of noun, while i-adjectives are closely related to verbs.
The two inflected classes, verb and adjective, are closed class
Closed class
In linguistics, a closed class is a word class to which no new items can normally be added, and that usually contains a relatively small number of items. Typical closed classes found in many languages are adpositions , determiners, conjunctions, and pronouns.Contrastingly, an open class offers...
es, meaning they do not readily gain new members. Instead, new and borrowed verbs and adjectives are conjugated periphrastically as verbal noun + suru (e.g. benkyō suru 'do studying = study') and adjectival noun + na. This is unusual from a Western viewpoint
Standard Average European
Standard Average European is a concept introduced by Benjamin Whorf to group the modern, Indo-European languages of Europe in the sense of a Sprachbund.The more central members of the SAE Sprachbund are Romance and West Germanic, i.e...
, though one parallel is that new Basque verbs
Basque verbs
The verb is one of the most complex parts of Basque grammar. It is sometimes represented as a difficult challenge for learners of the language, and many Basque grammars devote most of their pages to lists or tables of verb paradigms...
are only formed periphrastically. It is also opposite to the situation with pronouns, which are closed classes in Western languages but open class
Open class
Open class may refer to:*Open Class , an event classification*Open class , a word class readily accepting new items*Open class , a standardbred racing event open to all comers...
es in Japanese and some other East Asian languages
East Asian languages
East Asian languages describe two notional groupings of languages in East and Southeast Asia:* Languages which have been greatly influenced by Classical Chinese and the Chinese writing system, in particular Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese .* The larger grouping of languages includes the...
.
The conjugation
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
of i-adjectives has similarities to the conjugation of verbs, unlike Western languages where inflection of adjectives, where it exists, is more likely to have similarities to the declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
of nouns.
Japanese vocabulary has a large layer of Chinese loanwords, nearly all of which go back more than one thousand years, yet virtually none of them are verbs or "i-adjectives". However a few recent loanwords are sometimes playfully conjugated as verbs, for example English Google and double, whose Japanese transliterations end in -ru which happens to be the citation form
Citation form
In linguistics the citation form of a word can mean:* its canonical form or lemma: the form of an inflected word given in dictionaries or glossaries, thus also called the dictionary form....
ending of Japanese verbs.
Verbal nouns are uncontroversially nouns, having only minor syntactic differences to distinguish them from pure nouns like 'mountain'. Nominal adjectives have more syntactic differences versus pure nouns, but they, too, are ultimately a subcategory of nouns.
The system of word classes in Japanese has yet another typologically unusual characteristic: the subclass of nominal adjectives is syntactically heterogeneous. It has its own subdivisions defined by the array of syntactic divergences they have versus the pure nouns.
Japanese as a topic-prominent language
In discourseDiscourse
Discourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
pragmatics
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
, the term topic refers to what a section of discourse is about. At the beginning of a section of discourse, the topic is usually unknown, in which case it is usually necessary to explicitly mention it. As the discourse carries on, the topic need not be the grammatical subject of each new sentence.
Starting with Middle Japanese, the grammar evolved so as to explicitly distinguish topics from nontopics. This is done by two distinct particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
s (short words which do not change form). Consider the following pair of sentences:
- 太陽が昇る。
- taiyō ga noboru
- sun NONTOPIC rise
- 太陽は昇る。
- taiyō wa noboru
- sun TOPIC rise
Both sentences translate as "the sun rises". In the first sentence the sun (太陽 taiyō) is not a discourse topic—not yet; in the second sentence it now is a discourse topic. In linguistics (specifically, in discourse pragmatics) a sentence such as the second one (with wa) is termed a presentational sentence because its function in the discourse is to present sun as a topic, to "broach it for discussion". Once a referent has been established as the topic of the current monolog or dialog, then in (formal) modern Japanese its marking will change from wa to ga. To better explain the difference, the translation of the second sentence can be enlarged to "As for the sun, it rises" or "Speaking of the sun, it rises"; these renderings reflect a discourse fragment in which "the sun" is being established as the topic of an extended discussion.
Liberal omission of the subject of a sentence
The grammatical subjectSubject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
is commonly omitted in Japanese, as in
- 日本に行きました
- nihon ni ikimashita
- Japan LOCATIVE go-POLITE-PERFECT
The sentence literally expresses "went to Japan". Subjects are mentioned when a topic is introduced, or in situations where an ambiguity might result from their omission. The preceding example sentence would most likely be uttered in the middle of a discourse, where who it is that "went to Japan" will be clear from what has already been said (or written).
Sentences, phrases and words
Text (文章 bunshō) is composed of sentencesSentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
(文 bun), which are in turn composed of phrase
Phrase
In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause....
s (文節 bunsetsu), which are its smallest coherent components. Like Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
and classical Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, written Japanese does not typically demarcate words with spaces; its agglutinative nature further makes the concept of a word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
rather different from words in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. The listener identifies word divisions by semantic cues and a knowledge of phrase structure. Phrases have a single meaning-bearing word, followed by a string of suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es, auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
s and particles
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
to modify its meaning and designate its grammatical role. In the following example, phrases are indicated by vertical bars:
- 太陽が｜東の｜空に｜昇る。
- taiyō ga | higashi no | sora ni | noboru
- sun SUBJECT | east POSSESSIVE | sky LOCATIVE | rise
- The sun rises in the eastern sky.
Some scholars romanize
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
Japanese sentences by inserting spaces only at phrase boundaries (i.e., "taiyō-ga higashi-no sora-ni noboru"), treating an entire phrase as a single word. This represents an almost purely phonological conception of where one word ends and the next begins. There is some validity in taking this approach: phonologically
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, the postpositional particles merge with the structural word that precedes them, and within a phonological phrase, the pitch can have at most one fall. Usually, however, grammarians adopt a more conventional concept of word (単語 tango), one which invokes meaning and sentence structure.
Word classification
In linguistics generally, words and affixes are often classified into two major word categories: lexical words, those that refer to the world outside of a discourse, and function wordsFunction word
Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker...
—also including fragments of words—which help to build the sentence in accordance with the grammar rules of the language. Lexical words include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and sometimes prepositions and postpositions, while grammatical words or word parts include everything else. The native tradition in Japanese grammar scholarship seems to concur in this view of classification. This native Japanese tradition uses the terminology jiritsugo (自立語), "independent words", for words having lexical meaning, and fuzokugo (付属語), "ancillary words", for words having a grammatical function.
Classical Japanese had some auxiliary verbs (i.e., they were independent words) which have become grammaticized in modern Japanese as inflectional suffixes, such as the past tense suffix -ta (which might have developed as a contraction of -te ari).
Traditional scholarship proposes a system of word classes differing somewhat from the above mentioned. The "independent" words have the following categories.
- katsuyōgo (活用語), word classes which have inflections
- dōshi (動詞), verbs,
- keiyōshi (形容詞), i-type adjectives.
- keiyōdōshi (形容動詞), na-type adjectives
- hikatsuyōgo (非活用語) or mukatsuyōgo (無活用語), word classes which do not have inflections
- meishi (名詞), nouns
- daimeishi (代名詞), pronouns
- fukushi (副詞), adverbs
- setsuzokushi (接続詞), conjunctions
- kandōshi (感動詞), interjections
- rentaishi (連体詞), prenominals
Ancillary words also divide into a nonconjugable class, containing grammatical particles (助詞 joshi) and counter words
Japanese counter word
In Japanese, counter words or counters are used along with numbers to count things, actions, and events.In Japanese, as in Chinese and Korean, numerals cannot quantify nouns by themselves...
(助数詞 josūshi), and a conjugable class consisting of auxiliary verbs (助動詞 jodōshi). There is not wide agreement among linguists as to the English translations of the above terms.
Controversy over the characterization of nominal adjectives
Uehara (1998) observes that Japanese grammarians have disagreed as to the criteria that make some words "inflectional", katsuyō, and others not, in particular, the 形容動詞 keiyōdōshi – "na-adjectives" or "na-nominals. (It is not disputed that nouns like 'book' and 'mountain' are noninflectional and that verbs and i-adjectives are inflectional.) The claim that na-adjectives are inflectional rests on the claim that the syllable da 'is', usually regarded as a "copula verb", is really a suffix—an inflection. Thus hon 'book', generates a one-word sentence, honda 'it is a book', not a two-word sentence, hon da. However, numerous constructions seem to be incompatible with the suffixal copula claim.Reduplication for emphasis
-
- Hora! Hon, hon! 'See, it is a book!'
- Hora! Kirei, kirei! 'See, it is pretty!'
- Hora! Furui, furui! 'See, it is old!' (the adjectival inflection -i cannot be left off)
- Hora! Iku, iku! 'See, it does go!' (the verbal inflection -u cannot be left off)
Questions. In Japanese, questions are formed by adding the particle ka (or in colloquial speech, just by changing the intonation of the sentence).
-
- Hon/kirei ka? 'Is it a book? ; Is it pretty?'
- Furu-i/Ik-u ka? 'Is it old? ; Does it go?' (the inflections cannot be left off)
Several auxiliary verbs, e.g., mitai, 'looks like it's'
-
- Hon mitai da; Kirei mitai da 'It seems to be a book; It seems to be pretty'
- Furu-i mitai da; Ik-u mitai da 'It seems to be old; It seems to go'
On the basis of such constructions, Uehara (1998) finds that the copula is indeed an independent word, and that regarding the parameters on which i-adjectives share the syntactic pattern of verbs, the nominal adjectives pattern with pure nouns instead.
Similarly, Eleanor Harz Jorden considers this class of words a kind of nominal, not adjective, and refers to them as na-nominals in her textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language
Japanese: The Spoken Language
Japanese: The Spoken Language is an introductory textbook series for learning Japanese. JSL was written by Eleanor Harz Jorden in collaboration with Mari Noda. Part 1 was published in 1987 by Yale Language Press, Part 2 in 1988, and Part 3 in 1990...
.
Nouns
Japanese has no grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, or article
Article (grammar)
An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...
s (though the demonstrative その, sono, "that, those", is often translatable as "the"). Thus, specialists have agreed that Japanese noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s are noninflecting
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
: 猫 neko can be translated as "cat", "cats", "a cat", "the cat", "some cats" and so forth, depending on context. However, as part of the extensive pair of grammatical systems that Japanese possesses for honorification (making discourse deferential to the addressee or even to a third party) and politeness, nouns too can be modified. Nouns take politeness prefixes (which have not been regarded as inflections): o- for native nouns, and go- for Sino-Japanese nouns. A few examples are given in the following table. In a few cases, there is suppletion
Suppletion
In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies...
, as with the first of the examples given below, 'rice'. (Note that while these prefixes are almost always in Hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
— that is, as お o- or ご go — the kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
御 is used for both o and go prefixes in formal writing.)
Lacking number, Japanese does not differentiate between count
Count noun
In linguistics, a count noun is a common noun that can be modified by a numeral and that occurs in both singular and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc. A mass noun has none of these properties...
and mass noun
Mass noun
In linguistics, a mass noun is a noun that refers to some entity as an undifferentiated unit rather than as something with discrete subsets. Non-count nouns are best identified by their syntactic properties, and especially in contrast with count nouns. The semantics of mass nouns are highly...
s. (An English speaker learning Japanese would be well advised to treat Japanese nouns as mass nouns.) A small number of nouns have collective
Collective number
In linguistics, singulative number and collective number are terms used when the grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form of a noun, and the noun is specially marked to indicate a single item...
s formed by reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
(possibly accompanied by voicing and related processes (rendaku
Rendaku
is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...
)); for example: hito 'person' and hitobito 'people'. Reduplication is not productive
Productivity (linguistics)
In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. Since use to produce novel structures is the clearest proof of usage of a grammatical process, the evidence most often appealed to as establishing productivity is...
. Words in Japanese referring to more than one of something are collectives, not plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
s. Hitobito, for example, means "a lot of people" or "people in general". It is never used to mean "two people". A phrase like edo no hitobito would be taken to mean "the people of Edo
Edo
, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
", or "the population of Edo", not "two people from Edo" or even "a few people from Edo". Similarly, yamayama means "many mountains".
A limited number of nouns have collective forms that refer to groups of people. Examples include watashi-tachi, 'we'; anata-tachi, 'you (plural)'; bokura, 'we (less formal, more masculine)'. One uncommon personal noun, ware, 'I', or in some cases, 'you', has a much more common reduplicative collective form wareware 'we'.
The suffixes -tachi (達) and -ra (等) are by far the most common collectivizing suffixes. These are, again, not pluralizing suffixes: tarō-tachi does not mean "some number of people named Taro", but instead indicates the group including Taro. Depending on context, tarō-tachi might be translated into "Taro and his friends", "Taro and his siblings", "Taro and his family", or any other logical grouping that has Taro as the representative. Some words with collectives have become fixed phrases and (commonly) refer to one person. Specifically, kodomo 'child' and tomodachi 'friend' can be singular, even though -[t]omo and -[t]achi were originally collectivizing in these words; to unambiguously refer to groups of them, an additional collectivizing suffix is added: kodomotachi 'children' and tomodachitachi 'friends', though tomodachitachi is somewhat uncommon. Tachi is sometimes applied to inanimate objects, kuruma 'car' and kuruma-tachi, 'cars', for example, but this usage is colloquial and indicates a high level of anthropomorphisation and childlikeness, and is not more generally accepted as standard.
Pronouns
あたし atashi (female)
私 watashi (both)
俺 ore (male)
| 私 watashi
| 私 watakushi
|-
! second
| 君 kimi
お前 omae
手前 temae
貴様 kisama
| 貴方 anata
そちら sochira
| 貴方様 anata-sama
|-
! third
|colspan="3"| 彼 kare (male)
彼女 kanojo (female)
あいつ aitsu (pejorative)
|}
Although many grammars and textbooks mention pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s (代名詞 daimeishi), Japanese lacks true pronouns. (Daimeishi can be considered a subset of nouns.) Strictly speaking, pronouns do not take modifiers, but Japanese daimeishi do: 背の高い彼 se no takai kare (lit. tall he) is valid in Japanese. Also, unlike true pronouns, Japanese daimeishi are not closed-class: new daimeishi are introduced and old ones go out of use relatively quickly.
A large number of daimeishi referring to people are translated as pronouns in their most common uses. Examples: 彼 kare, he); 彼女 kanojo, she); 私 watashi, I); see also the adjoining table or a longer list. Some of these "personal nouns" such as 己 onore, I (exceedingly humble), or 僕 boku, I (young male), also have second-person uses: おのれ onore in second-person is an extremely rude "you", and boku in second-person is a diminutive "you" used for young boys. This further differentiates daimeishi from pronouns, which cannot change their person. Kare and kanojo also mean "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" respectively, and this usage of the words is possibly more common than the use as pronouns.
Like other subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
s, Japanese deemphasizes personal daimeishi, which are seldom used. This is partly because Japanese sentences do not always require explicit subjects, and partly because names or titles are often used where pronouns would appear in a translation:
- 「木下さんは、背が高いですね。」
- Kinoshita-san wa, se ga takai desu ne.
- (addressing Mr. Kinoshita) "You're pretty tall, aren't you?"
- 「専務、明日福岡市西区の山本商事の社長に会っていただけますか？」
- Semmu, asu Fukuoka-shi nishi-ku no Yamamoto-shōji no shachō ni atte itadakemasu ka?
- (addressing the managing director) "Would it be possible for you to meet the president of Yamamoto Trading Co. in West Ward, FukuokaNishi-ku, Fukuokais one of the seven wards of Fukuoka City, Japan. Meaning literally "west ward," it is bordered to the east by Sawara-ku, and to the west by Maebaru and Shima. As of 2003, it has a population of 173,813 people and an area of 83.81 km2...
tomorrow?"
While there is no lexical difference between nouns and daimeishi, the possible referents of daimeishi can be constrained depending on the order of occurrence. The following pair of examples (due to Bart Mathias) illustrates one such constraint.
- Honda-kun ni atte, kare no hon o kaeshita (ホンダ君に会って、彼の本を返した。) met Honda and returned his book. ("His" here can refer to Honda.)
- Kare ni atte, Honda-kun no hon o kaeshita (彼に会って、ホンダ君の本を返した。) met him and returned Honda's book. (Here, "him" cannot refer to Honda.)
Reflexive pronouns
English has a reflexive form of each personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
(himself, herself, itself, themselves, etc.); Japanese, in contrast, has one main reflexive daimeishi, namely jibun (自分), which can also mean 'I'. The uses of the reflexive (pro)nouns in the two languages are very different, as demonstrated by the following literal translations (*=impossible, ??=ambiguous):
| English | Japanese | reason |
|---|---|---|
| History repeats itself. | *Rekishi wa jibun o kurikaesu. (*歴史は自分を繰り返す。) | the target of jibun must be animate |
| Hiroshi talked to Kenji about himself (=Hiroshi) | Hiroshi wa Kenji ni jibun no koto o hanashita. (ひろしは健司に自分のことを話した。) | there is no ambiguity in the translation as explained below |
| *Makoto expects that Shizuko will take good care of himself (=Makoto; note that Shizuko is female) | ??誠は静子が自分を大事にすることを期待している。 ??Makoto wa Shizuko ga jibun o daiji ni suru koto o kitai shite iru. either "Makoto expects that Shizuko will take good care of him", or "Makoto expects that Shizuko will take good care of herself." |
jibun can be in a different sentence or dependent clause, but its target is ambiguous |
If the sentence has more than one grammatical or semantic subject, then the target of jibun is the subject of the primary or most prominent action; thus in the following sentence jibun refers unambiguously to Shizuko (even though Makoto is the grammatical subject) because the primary action is Shizuko's reading.
- 誠は静子に自分の家で本を読ませた。
- Makoto wa Shizuko ni jibun no uchi de hon o yomaseta.
- Makoto made Shizuko read book(s) in her house.
In practice the main action is not always discernible, in which case such sentences are ambiguous. The use of jibun in complex sentences follows non-trivial rules.
There are also equivalents to jibun such as mizukara. Other uses of the reflexive pronoun in English are covered by adverbs like hitorideni which is used in the sense of "by oneself". For example
- 機械がひとりでに動き出した
- kikai ga hitorideni ugokidashita
- "The machine started operating by itself."
Change in a verb's valency
Valency (linguistics)
In linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related, though not identical, to verb transitivity, which counts only object arguments of the verbal predicate...
is not accomplished by use of reflexive pronouns (in this Japanese is like English but unlike many other European languages). Instead, separate (but usually related) intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
s and transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
s are used. There is no longer any productive morphology to derive transitive verbs from intransitive ones, or vice versa.
Demonstratives
DemonstrativeDemonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s occur in the ko-, so-, and a- series. The ko- (proximal) series refers to things closer to the speaker than the hearer, the so- (mesial) series for things closer to the hearer, and the a- (distal) series for things distant to both the speaker and the hearer. With do-, demonstratives turn into the corresponding interrogative form. Demonstratives can also be used to refer to people, for example
- 「こちらは林さんです。」
- Kochira wa Hayashi-san desu.
- "This is Mr. Hayashi."
Demonstratives limit, and therefore precede, nouns; thus この本 kono hon for "this/my book", and その本 sono hon for "that/your book".
When demonstratives are used to refer to things not visible to the speaker or the hearer, or to (abstract) concepts, they fulfill a related but different anaphoric
Anaphora (linguistics)
In linguistics, anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another. Usually, an anaphoric expression is represented by a pro-form or some other kind of deictic--for instance, a pronoun referring to its antecedent...
role. The anaphoric distals are used for shared information between the speaker and the listener.
- A：先日、札幌に行って来ました。
- A: Senjitsu, Sapporo ni itte kimashita.
- A: I visited Sapporo recently.
- B：あそこ(*そこ)はいつ行ってもいい所ですね。
- B: Asoko (*Soko) wa itsu itte mo ii tokoro desu ne.
- B: Yeah, that's a great place to visit whenever you go.
Soko instead of asoko would imply that B doesn't share this knowledge about Sapporo, which is inconsistent with the meaning of the sentence. The anaphoric mesials are used to refer to experience or knowledge that is not shared between the speaker and listener.
- 佐藤：田中という人が昨日死んだんだって。
- Satō : Tanaka to iu hito ga kinō shinda n da tte...
- Sato: I heard that a man called Tanaka died yesterday...
- 森：えっ、本当?
- Mori: E', hontō?
- Mori: Oh, really?
- 佐藤：だから、その(*あの)人、森さんの昔の隣人じゃなかったっけ？
- Satō : Dakara, sono (*ano) hito, Mori-san no mukashi no rinjin ja nakatta 'kke?
- Sato: It's why I asked... wasn't he an old neighbour of yours?
Again, ano is inappropriate here because Sato doesn't (didn't) know Tanaka personally. The proximal demonstratives do not have clear anaphoric uses. They can be used in situations where the distal series sound too disconnected:
- 一体何ですか、これ(*あれ)は?
- Ittai nan desu ka, kore (*are) wa?
- What on earth is this?
Stem forms
Prior to discussing the conjugable words, a brief note about stem forms. Conjugative suffixes and auxiliary verbs are attached to the stem forms of the affixee. In modern Japanese there are the following six stem forms.Note that this order follows from the -a, -i, -u, -e, -o endings that these forms have in 五段 (5-row) verbs (according to the あ、い、う、え、お collation order of Japanese), where terminal and attributive forms are the same for verbs (hence only 5 surface forms), but differ for nominals, notably na-nominals.
Irrealis form (未然形 mizenkei) -a: is used for plain negative (of verbs), causative and passive constructions. The most common use of this form is with the -nai auxiliary that turns verbs into their negative (predicate) form. (See Verbs below.)
Continuative form (連用形 ren'yōkei) -i: is used in a linking role. This is the most productive stem form, taking on a variety of endings and auxiliaries, and can even occur independently in a sense similar to the -te ending. This form is also used to negate adjectives.
Terminal form (終止形 shūshikei) -u: is used at the ends of clauses in predicate
Predicate (grammar)
There are two competing notions of the predicate in theories of grammar. Traditional grammar tends to view a predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies. The other understanding of predicates is inspired from work in predicate calculus...
positions. This form is also variously known as plain form (基本形 kihonkei) or dictionary form (辞書形 jishokei) – it is the form that verbs are listed under in a dictionary.
Attributive form ( rentaikei) -u: is prefixed to nominals and is used to define or classify the noun, similar to a relative clause
Relative clause
A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...
in English. In modern Japanese it is practically identical to the terminal form, except that verbs are generally not inflected for politeness; in old Japanese these forms differed. Further, na-nominals behave differently in terminal and attributive positions; see adjectives, below.
Hypothetical form (仮定形 kateikei) -e: is used for conditional and subjunctive forms, using the -ba ending.
Imperative form (命令形 meireikei) -o: is used to turn verbs into commands. Adjectives do not have an imperative stem form.
The application of conjugative suffixes to stem forms follow certain euphonic principles (音便 onbin), which is discussed below.
Verbs
Verbs (動詞 dōshi) in Japanese are rigidly constrained to the ends of clauses in what is known as the predicate position.| 猫 | は | 魚 | を | 食べる。 |
| neko | wa | sakana | o | taberu |
| Cats | TOPIC | fish | OBJECT | eat |
| Cats eat fish. | ||||
The subject and objects of the verb are indicated by means of particles, and the grammatical functions of the verb — primarily tense and voice — are indicated by means of conjugation
Conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:* Conjugation , the modification of a verb from its basic form* Conjugate , used to rationalize the denominator of a fraction...
. When the subject and the dissertative topic coincide, the subject is often omitted; if the verb is intransitive, the entire sentence may consist of a single verb. Verbs have two tenses indicated by conjugation, past and nonpast. The semantic difference between present and future is not indicated by means of conjugation. Usually there is no ambiguity as context makes it clear whether the speaker is referring to the present or future. Voice and aspect are also indicated by means of conjugation, and possibly agglutinating auxiliary verbs. For example, the continuative aspect is formed by means of the continuative conjugation known as the gerundive or -te form, and the auxiliary verb iru "to be"; to illustrate, 見る miru, "to see") → 見ている mite iru, "to be seeing").
Verbs can be semantically classified based on certain conjugations.
Stative verbs: indicate existential properties, such as "to be" (いる iru), "to be able to do" (出来る dekiru), "to need" (要る iru), etc. These verbs generally do not have a continuative conjugation with -iru because they are semantically continuative already.
Continual verbs: conjugate with the auxiliary -iru to indicate the progressive aspect. Examples: "to eat" (食べる taberu), "to drink" (飲む nomu), "to think" (考える kangaeru). To illustrate the conjugation, 食べる taberu, "to eat") → 食べている tabete iru, "to be eating").
Punctual verbs: conjugate with -iru to indicate a repeated action, or a continuing state after some action. Example: 知る shiru, "to know") → 知っている shitte iru, "to be knowing"); 打つ utsu, "to hit") → 打っている utte iru, "to be hitting (repeatedly))".
Non-volitional verb: indicate uncontrollable action or emotion. These verbs generally have no volitional, imperative or potential conjugation. Examples: 好む konomu, "to like / to prefer", emotive), 見える mieru, "to be visible", non-emotive).
Movement verbs: indicate motion. Examples: 歩く aruku, "to walk"), 帰る kaeru, "to return"). In the continuative form (see below) they take the particle ni to indicate a purpose.
There are other possible classes, and a large amount of overlap between the classes.
Lexically, nearly every verb in Japanese is a member of exactly one of the following three regular conjugation groups (see also Japanese consonant and vowel verbs
Japanese consonant and vowel verbs
Japanese has two types of regular verb,#consonant-stem, , Group I, or u verbs, and#vowel-stem, , Group II, or ru verbs.All vowel-stem verbs end in either -eru or -iru...
).
Group 2a (上一段 kami ichidan, lit. upper 1-row group): verbs with a stem ending in i. The terminal stem form always rhymes with -iru. Examples: 見る miru, "to see"), 着る kiru, "to wear").
Group 2b (下一段 shimo ichidan, lit. lower 1-row group): verbs with a stem ending in e. The terminal stem form always rhymes with -eru. Examples: 食べる taberu, "to eat"), くれる kureru, "to give" (to someone of lower or more intimate status)). (Note that some Group 1 verbs resemble Group 2b verbs, but their stems end in r, not e.)
Group 1 (五段 godan, lit. 5-row group): verbs with a stem ending in a consonant. When this is r and the verb ends in -eru, it is not apparent from the terminal form whether the verb is Group 1 or Group 2b, e.g. 帰る kaeru, "to return"). If the stem ends in w, that sound only appears in before the final a of the irrealis form.
The "row" in the above classification means a row in the gojūon
Gojuon
The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
table. "Upper 1-row" means the row that is one row above the center row (the u-row) i.e. i-row. "Lower 1-row" means the row that is one row below the center row (the u-row) i.e. e-row. "5-row" means the conjugation runs though all 5 rows of the gojūon
Gojuon
The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
table. A conjugation is fully described by identifying both the row and the column in the gojūon
Gojuon
The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
table. For example, 見る miru, "to see") belongs to マ行上一段活用 (ma-column i-row conjugation), 食べる taberu, "to eat") belongs to バ行下一段活用(ba-column e-row conjugation), and 帰る kaeru, "to return") belongs to ラ行五段活用(ra-column 5-row conjugation).
One should avoid confusing verbs in ラ行五段活用 (ra-column 5-row conjugation) with verbs in 上一段活用 (i-row conjugation) or 下一段活用 (e-row conjugation). For example, 切る kiru, "to cut") belongs to ラ行五段活用 (ra-column 5-row conjugation), whereas its homophone 着る kiru, "to wear") belongs to カ行上一段活用 (ka-column i-row conjugation). Likewise, 練る neru, "to knead") belongs to ラ行五段活用 (ra-column 5-row conjugation), whereas its homophone 寝る neru, "to sleep") belongs to ナ行下一段活用 (na-column e-row conjugation).
Historical note: classical Japanese had upper and lower 1- and 2-row groups and a 4-row group (上／下一段 kami/shimo ichidan, 上／下二段 kami/shimo nidan, and 四段 yodan, the nidan verbs becoming most of today's ichidan verbs (there were only a handful of kami ichidan verbs and only one single shimo ichidan verb in classical Japanese), and the yodan group, due to the writing reform in 1946 to write Japanese as it is pronounced, naturally became the modern godan verbs. Since verbs have migrated across groups in the history of the language, conjugation of classical verbs is not predictable from a knowledge of modern Japanese alone.
Of the irregular classes, there are two:
sa-group: which has only one member, する suru, "to do"). In Japanese grammars these words are classified as サ変 sa-hen, an abbreviation of サ行変格活用 sa-gyō henkaku katsuyō, sa-row irregular conjugation).
ka-group: which also has one member, 来る kuru, "to come"). The Japanese name for this class is カ行変格活用 ka-gyō henkaku katsuyō or simply カ変 ka-hen.
Classical Japanese had two further irregular classes, the na-group, which contained 死ぬ shinu, "to die") and 往ぬ inu, "to go", "to die"), the ra-group, which included such verbs as あり ari, the equivalent of modern aru, as well as quite a number of extremely irregular verbs that cannot be classified.
The following table illustrates the stem forms of the above conjugation groups, with the root indicated with dots. For example, to find the hypothetical form of the group 1 verb 書く kaku, look in the second row to find its root, kak, then in the hypothetical row to get the ending -e, giving the stem form kake. When there are multiple possibilities, they are listed in the order of increasing rarity.
example
!colspan="2"| 1
! 2a
! 2b
!rowspan="2"| sa
!rowspan="2"| ka
|-
! 使・ tsuka(w).
! 書・ kak.
! 見・ mi.
! 食べ・ tabe.
|-
! Irrealis form1
(未然形 mizenkei)
| 使わ tsukaw.a2
使お tsuka.o
| 書か kak.a
書こ kak.o
| 見 mi.
| 食べ tabe.
| さ sa
し shi
せ se
| 来 ko
|-
! Continuative form
(連用形 ren'yōkei)
| 使い tsuka.i
| 書き kak.i
| 見 mi.
| 食べ tabe.
| し shi
| 来 ki
|-
! Terminal form
(終止形 shūshikei)
| 使う tsuka.u
| 書く kak.u
| 見る mi.ru
| 食べる tabe.ru
| する suru
| 来る kuru
|-
! Attributive form
(連体形 rentaikei)
| colspan="7"| same as terminal form
|-
! Hypothetical form
(仮定形 kateikei)
| 使え tsuka.e
| 書け kak.e
| 見れ mi.re
| 食べれ tabe.re
| すれ sure
| 来れ kure
|-
! Imperative form
(命令形 meireikei)
| 使え tsuka.e
| 書け kak.e
| 見ろ mi.ro
見よ mi.yo
| 食べろ tabe.ro
食べよ tabe.yo
| しろ shiro
せよ seyo
せい sei
| 来い koi
|}
- The -a and -o irrealis forms for Group 1 verbs were historically one, but since the post-WWII spelling reforms they have been written differently. In modern Japanese the -o form is used only for the volitional mood and the -a form is used in all other cases; see also the conjugation table below.
- The unexpected ending is due to the verb's root being tsukaw- but [w] only being pronounced before [a] in modern Japanese.
The above are only the stem forms of the verbs; to these one must add various verb endings in order to get the fully conjugated verb. The following table lists the most common conjugations. Note that in some cases the form is different depending on the conjugation group of the verb. See Japanese verb conjugations
Japanese verb conjugations
This is a list of Japanese verb and adjective conjugations. Almost all of these are regular, but the conjugations of the very few irregular verbs are also listed. Japanese verb conjugation is the same for all subjects, first person , second person and third person , singular and plural. The plain...
for a full list.
imperfective
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future...
| cont. + ます masu
| 書き・ます
kaki.masu
| 見・ます
mi.masu
| 食べ・ます
tabe.masu
| し・ます
shi.masu
| 来・ます
ki.masu
|-
! plain
perfective
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
| cont. + た ta
| 書い・た
kai.ta2
| 見・た
mi.ta
| 食べ・た
tabe.ta
| し・た
shi.ta
| 来・た
ki.ta
|-
! plain
negative
imperfective
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future...
| irrealis + ない nai
| 書か・ない
kaka.nai
| 見・ない
mi.nai
| 食べ・ない
tabe.nai
| し・ない
shi.nai
| 来・ない
ko.nai
|-
! plain
negative
perfective
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
| irrealis
+ なかった nakatta
| 書か・なかった
kaka.nakatta
| 見・なかった
mi.nakatta
| 食べ・なかった
tabe.nakatta
| し・なかった
shi.nakatta
| 来・なかった
ko.nakatta
|-
! -te form (gerundive)
| cont. + て -te
| 書いて
kai.te2
| 見て
mi.te
| 食べて
tabe.te
| して
shi.te
| 来て
ki.te
|-
! provisional
conditional
| hyp. + ば ba
| 書け・ば
kake.ba
| 見れ・ば
mire.ba
| 食べれ・ば
tabere.ba
| すれ・ば
sure.ba
| 来れ・ば
kure.ba
|-
! past
conditional
| cont. + たら tara
| 書いたら
kai.tara2
| 見たら
mi.tara
| 食べたら
tabe.tara
| したら
shi.tara
| 来たら
ki.tara
|-
!rowspan="2"| volitional
| irrealis + う u
| 書こ・う
kako.u
|colspan="4"|
|-
| irrealis + よう -yō
|
| 見・よう
mi.yō
| 食べ・よう
tabe.yō
| し・よう
shi.yō
| 来・よう
ko.yō
|-
!rowspan="2"| passive
| irrealis + れる reru
| 書か・れる
kaka.reru
|colspan="2"|
| さ・れる
sa.reru
|
|-
| irrealis + られる -rareru
|
| 見・られる
mi.rareru
| 食べ・られる
tabe.rareru
|
| 来・られる
ko.rareru
|-
!rowspan="2"| causative
| irrealis + せる seru
| 書か・せる
kaka.seru
|colspan="2"|
| さ・せる
sa.seru
|
|-
| irrealis + させる -saseru
|
| 見・させる
mi.saseru
| 食べ・させる
tabe.saseru
|
| 来・させる
ko.saseru
|-
!rowspan="2"| potential
| hyp. + る ru
| 書け・る
kake.ru
|colspan="2"|
| 出来る
dekiru1
|
|-
| irrealis + られる -rareru
|
| 見・られる
mi.rareru
| 食べ・られる
tabe.rareru
|
| 来・られる
ko.rareru
|}
- This is an entirely different verb; する suru has no potential form.
- These forms change depending on the final syllable of the verb's dictionary form (whether u, ku, gu, su, etc.). For details, see Euphonic changes, below, and the article Japanese verb conjugations and adjective declensions.
The polite ending -masu conjugates as a group 1 verb, except that the negative imperfective and perfective forms are -masen and -masen deshita respectively, and certain conjugations are in practice rarely if ever used. The passive and potential endings -reru and -rareru, and the causative endings -seru and -saseru all conjugate as group 2b verbs. Multiple verbal endings can therefore agglutinate. For example, a common formation is the causative-passive ending, -sase-rareru.
- 僕は姉に納豆を食べさせられた。
- boku wa ane ni nattō o tabesaserareta.
- I was made to eat nattoNattois a traditional Japanese food made from soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilis. It is popular especially as a breakfast food. As a rich source of protein and probiotics, nattō and the soybean paste miso formed a vital source of nutrition in feudal Japan. Nattō can be an acquired taste because...
by my (elder) sister.
As should be expected, the vast majority of theoretically possible combinations of conjugative endings are not semantically meaningful.
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Japanese has a large variety of related pairs of transitive verbTransitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
s (that take a direct object) and intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
s (that do not usually take a direct object), such as the transitive hajimeru (始める, an actor begins an activity), and the intransitive hajimaru (始まる, an activity begins).
For example,
- 先生 が 授業 を 始める。
- Sensei ga jugyō o hajimeru.
- The teacher starts the class.
- 授業 が 始まる。
- Jugyō ga hajimaru.
- The class starts.
Note: Some intransitive verbs (usually verbs of motion) do nevertheless take a direct object. For example, koeru (超える, to go beyond):
- 私 は 制限 スピード を 超える。
- Watashi wa seigen speedo o koeru.
- I go beyond the speed limit.
Adjectives
Semantically speaking, words that denote attributes or properties are primarily distributed between two morphological classes (there are also a few other classes):
- adjectives (conventionally called "i -adjectives") (形容詞 keiyōshi) – these have roots and conjugating stem forms, and are semantically and morphologically similar to stative verbStative verbA stative verb is one that asserts that one of its arguments has a particular property . Statives differ from other aspectual classes of verbs in that they are static; that is, they have undefined duration...
s. - nominal adjectives (conventionally called "na-adjectives") (形容動詞 keiyōdōshi, lit. "adjectival verb") – these are nouns that combine with the copula.
Unlike adjectives in languages like English, i -adjectives in Japanese inflect for aspect and mood, like verbs. Japanese adjectives do not have comparative or superlative inflections; comparatives and superlatives have to be marked periphrastically using adverbs like motto 'more' and ichiban 'most'.
Every adjective in Japanese can be used in an attributive position. Nearly every Japanese adjective can be used in a predicative position; this differs from English where there are many common adjectives such as "major", as in "a major question", that cannot be used to in the predicate position (that is, *"The question is major" is not grammatical English). There are a few Japanese adjectives that cannot predicate, known as 連体詞 (rentaishi, attributives), which are derived from other word classes; examples include 大きな ōkina "big", 小さな chiisana "small", and おかしな okashina "strange" which are all stylistic na-type variants of normal i-type adjectives.
All i -adjectives except for いい ii, good) have regular conjugations, and ii is irregular only in the fact that it is a changed form of the regular adjective 良い yoi permissible in the terminal and attributive forms. For all other forms it reverts to yoi.
(未然形 mizenkei)
| 安かろ .karo
| 静かだろ -daro
|-
! Continuative form
(連用形 ren'yōkei)
| 安く .ku
| 静かで -de
|-
! Terminal form¹
(終止形 shūshikei)
| 安い .i
| 静かだ -da
|-
! Attributive form¹
(連体形 rentaikei)
| 安い .i
| 静かな -na /
静かなる -naru
|-
! Hypothetical form
(仮定形 kateikei)
| 安けれ .kere
| 静かなら -nara
|-
! Imperative form²
(命令形 meireikei)
| 安かれ .kare
| 静かなれ -nare
|}
- The attributive and terminal forms were formerly 安き .ki and 安し .shi, respectively; in modern Japanese these are used productively for stylistic reasons only, although many set phraseSet phraseA set phrase or fixed phrase is a phrase whose parts are fixed, even if the phrase could be changed without harming the literal meaning. This is because a set phrase is a culturally accepted phrase. A set phrase does not necessarily have any literal meaning in and of itself. Set phrases may...
s such as 名無し nanashi (anonymous) and よし yoshi (sometimes written yosh, general positive interjection) derive from them. - The imperative form is extremely rare in modern Japanese, restricted to set patterns like 遅かれ早かれ osokare hayakare 'sooner or later', where they are treated as adverbial phrases. It is impossible for an imperative form to be in a predicate position.
Common conjugations of adjectives are enumerated below. ii is not treated separately, because all conjugation forms are identical to those of yoi.
安い yasui, "cheap")
!colspan="2"| na-adjectives
静か shizuka, "quiet")
|-
! informal
nonpast
| root + -i
(Used alone, without the copula)
| 安いyasui
"is cheap"
| root + copula da
| 静かだ shizuka da
"is quiet"
|-
! informal
past
| cont. + あった atta
(u + a collapse)
| 安かった
yasuk.atta
"was cheap"
| cont. + あった atta
(e + a collapse)
| 静かだった
shizuka d.atta
"was quiet"
|-
! informal
negative
nonpast
| cont. + (は)ない (wa) nai¹
| 安く(は)ない
yasuku(wa)nai
"isn't cheap"
| cont. + (は)ない (wa) nai
| 静かで(は)ない
shizuka de (wa) nai
"isn't quiet"
|-
! informal
negative
past
| cont. + (は)なかった (wa) nakatta¹
| 安く(は)なかった
yasuku(wa)nakatta
"wasn't cheap"
| cont. + (は)なかった (wa) nakatta
| 静かで(は)なかった
shizuka de (wa) nakatta
"wasn't quiet"
|-
! polite
nonpast
| root + -i + copula です desu
| 安いです
yasui desu
"is cheap"
| root + copula です desu
| 静かです
shizuka desu
"is quiet"
|-
!rowspan="2"| polite
negative
non past
| inf. neg. non-past + ありません arimasen¹
| 安くありません
yasuku arimasen
| inf. cont + (は)ありません (wa) arimasen
| 静かではありません
shizuka de wa arimasen
|-
| inf. neg. non-past + naiない + copula です desu¹
| 安くないです
yasukunai desu
| inf. cont + (は)ないです (wa) nai desu
| 静かではないです
shizuka de wa nai desu
|-
!rowspan="2"| polite
negative
past
|inf. neg. past + ありませんでした arimasen deshita
|安くありませんでした
yasuku arimasen deshita
| inf. cont + (は)ありませんでした (wa) arimasen deshita
| 静かではありませんでした
shizuka de wa arimasen deshita
|-
|inf. neg. past + copula です desu¹
| 安くなかったです
yasukunakatta desu
| inf. neg. past + なかったです nakatta desu ¹
| 静かではなかったです
shizuka de wa nakatta desu
|-
! -te form
| cont. + て te
| 安くて
yasuku.te
| cont.
| 静かで
shizuka de
|-
! provisional
conditional
| hyp. + ば ba
| 安ければ
yasukere.ba
| hyp. (+ ば ba)
| 静かなら(ば)
shizuka nara(ba)
|-
! past
conditional
| inf. past + ら ra
| 安かったら
yasukatta.ra
| inf. past + ら ra
| 静かだったら
shizuka datta.ra
|-
! volitional²
| irrealis + う u
| 安かろう yasukarō
| irrealis + う u
= root + だろう darō
| 静かだろう shizuka darō
|-
! adverbial
| cont.
| 安く
yasuku.
| root + に ni
| 静かに
shizuka ni
|-
! degree
| root + さ sa
| 安さ
yasu-sa
| root + sa
| 静かさ
shizuka-sa
|}
- note that these are just forms of the i-type adjective ない nai
- since most adjectives describe non-volitional conditions, the volitional form is interpreted as "it is possible", if sensible. In some rare cases it is semi-volitional: 良かろう yokarō 'OK' (lit: let it be good) in response to a report or request.
Adjectives too are governed by euphonic rules in certain cases, as noted in the section on it below. For the polite negatives of na-type adjectives, see also the section below on the copula だ da.
The copula (だ da)
The copula da behaves very much like a verb or an adjective in terms of conjugation.(連用形 ren'youkei)
| で de
|-
! Terminal form
(終止形 shūshikei)
| だ da (informal)
です desu (polite)
でございます de gozaimasu (respectful)
|-
! Attributive form
(連体形 rentaikei)
| である de aru
|-
! Hypothetical form
(仮定形 kateikei)
| なら nara
|-
! Imperative form
(命令形 meireikei)
| impossible
|}