This is an archive of past discussions about Japanese grammar. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Suggested merges

The following articles have a lot of duplication with Japanese grammar. Either Japanese grammar should be sensibly sliced up and distributed, or these articles should be merged here.

Japanese verb conjugations

Why do you want to merge this page into the already over-long Japanese grammar? This page is intended to be a comprehensive reference list of verb conjugations in Japanese. It will make Japanese grammar too long. The tables on Japanese grammar are illustrative, and the tables on Japanese verb conjugations are comprehensive. --DannyWilde 07:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Japanese consonant and vowel verbs

Don't merge this page. It is a reference page where I am going to put the lists from the sci.lang.japan FAQ. Please see the link. --DannyWilde 07:42, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

— Kaustuv Chaudhuri 07:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I want to merge them because there is needless duplication. I would be happy to discuss how to divide up Japanese grammar into a collection of smaller but more focused articles. Incidentally, please respond below instead of interspersing your responses, which makes the flow of dialogue impossible to follow. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 07:45, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

First you put a sign on the article I wrote suggesting a merge, and then you say you want to discuss breaking up the Japanese grammar article into smaller pieces, which is a contradiction. Please decide what you want to do before you start sticking merge signs on pages. --DannyWilde 08:11, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The merge is still the suggested course of action. Anyway, it appears that arguing with you would be fruitless. Do whatever you wish. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:01, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your permission. I find the current "Japanese grammar" article very hard to grapple with. There seems to be a lot of detail in some places and then great big gaps in other ones. For example there are lots of examples about "jibun" and "are/sore/kore" but on the verbs it says very little relatively speaking, and there is lots of rather dense stuff about historical Japanese and "sumite" becoming "sunde", and the use of the names like "renyoukei" and "kami ichidan doushi" which actually don't mean very much - basically it has too much terminology. I was originally thinking of editing Japanese grammar into what I thought would be a better form, but after a few trial edits and test questions I felt rather concerned about the response I would get, so I decided to avoid trouble by doing minor edits only on the Japanese grammar page and creating supplementary articles for the things I wanted to add. I would like to aim for simplicity and unity and focus in the supplementary articles. I hoped it would be a reasonable compromise, and here even you suggest splitting the Japanese grammar page, but if you object to the articles I have made I suggest detailing the problems rather than merging. Also I wonder why you thought of merging my pages, when the page Japanese language has a grammar section which is extremely bloated, and really does need to be merged into Japanese grammar. If you want to merge something, I would suggest the most in need of merging is the great mass of untamed and unfocused edits on Japanese language#Grammar rather than my modest pages which are fairly well-focused and form a valuable supplement to this page in my opinion.

Annotated bibliography and references

Anybody care to chime in with content for this section? Anybody? :) --- Eiríkr Útlendi 15:08, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Stem forms

Hello, I wonder if there was some particular reason why the order of the stem forms does not follow the standard order of 未然・連用・終止・連体・仮定・命令? Anything I read about these six forms always states the forms in that order (and if it is classical Japanese, 仮定 is replaced by 已然, the perfective), and in fact dictionaries simply state the six forms of a particular verb etc. in that order without specifying which is 未然, 連用 etc. I think the forms here should be put in this standard order. -- KittySaturn 03:03, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

No objection from me. Go ahead! Incidentally, it would be more accurate to call izenkei the realis rather than the perfective. Note that the classical perfect forms -tari, -nu, etc. attached to the ren'youkei. Also cf. Shibatani pp. 221-225. — Kaustuv 03:35, 2005 May 13 (UTC)

Pronouns, etc.

The article was too dogmatic about the claim that there are no "pronouns" in Japanese. This is not a popular view among Japanese linguists; see for instance page 312 in Shibatani's The Languages of Japan, or the long discussion in pages 291-324 in Kuno's The Structure of the Japanese Language. — Kaustuv 10:08, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

Also, 形容詞 are not "stative verbs". ある and 知る are stative verbs. The term "copular noun" for 形容動詞 is a combination of nonstandard and strange. You might have a vague point if you want to classify 形容詞 and 動詞 as "verbals", but that needs more exposition, and I will oppose calling 形容詞 "verbs" and 形容動詞 "copular". — Kaustuv 10:29, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for your thoughts. Perhaps my rewrite was a bit too strong; thanks for pointing that out. Please allow me to address your concerns.

On pronouns: Pronouns are defined as "the closed set of items which can be used to substitute for a noun phrase or single noun." (This and other definitions are from David Crystal's "A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.") One notable characteristic of pronouns is that they do not take modifiers. "Closed set" refers to certain sets of words "whose membership is fixed or limited." English pronouns clearly fit these defintions: how many word for "I" are there? Is it OK to say "tall him"? Compare this to Japanese. First person nouns abound; furthermore, in some contexts, "boku," "ore," and "atashi" can be used to refer to the listener--the second person--and not the speaker. Translation doesn't equal classification, by which I mean that the translation of watashi as "I" doesn't make it a pronoun.

Yes, certainly. The above paragraph would be a worthy addition to the article! Japanese grammarians, however, do recognize daimeishi; I would point you Mikami's nihongo no koubun, for instance. (I have also seen daimeishi mentioned in high-school kokugo textbooks.) Kaustuv

I was thinking of doing just that, but you up and did an excellent rewrite for me! (I made just a few modifications, based on what I wrote above, to the outstanding rewrite you did.) I don't deny that the term daimeishi is used; I just deny that it is appropriate for Japanese. Incidentally, I got the idea that Japanese doesn't have pronouns from Bart Matthias, one of my teachers, whom you quoted. Squidley 19:28, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On stative verbs: Verbs can describe either actions or states. Stative verbs do not appear in the progressive or imperative forms, so aru is grammatically (i.e., syntactically) stative, while shiru is not. Notice that these classifications are not universal; know is stative in English.

I was wrong about shiru in the above comment. Many apologies. If you look in the "verbs" section in the article, I had shiru classified correctly there. Kaustuv

Hmm, I might be wrong about shiru, though, because I don't think shire is OK. Squidley 19:28, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, しれ rare, but it does exist: 思い知れ! — Kaustuv 01:11, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

And in haji o shire! Squidley

I guess we need to define verb, too. From Crystal again: "verb refers to an element which can display morphological contrasts of tense, aspect, voice, mood, person, and number." (Japanese has only aspect and mood.) Furthermore, a verb "is the element which, singly or in combination with other verbs, is used as the minimal predicate of the sentence." Contrast this with adjective: "the main set of items which specify the attributes of nouns." Now, let's compare English red and Japanese akai.

red sky : akai sora

The sky is red : sora ga akai

The sky was red : sora ga akakatta

As we can see, the English adjective doesn't change its form at all, and the last two sentences require verbs to be complete. On the other hand, the Japanese stative verb akai predicates the last two examples, and inflects for perfect (or "past," if you must). Furthermore, adding the copula da would plainly make these sentences unacceptable.

Unfortunately, I have to call it quits for now, but I'll be back to finish my thoughts later.

I do have a question for you (Kaustuv), though. I see from your home page that you are a graduate student in computer science. (For the record, I have a Ph.D. in Linguistics and am currently a professor of Japanese.) I would not presume to edit something on computer science, of which I am ignorant, so if you're editing an article on Japanese grammar, you must have some some specialized knowledge. What is it? Squidley

I have no qualifications. All my edits since August of last year (when I gave the article a thorough overhaul) have been based on my understanding of, primarily, Shibatani's The Languages of Japan, Kuno's The Structure of the Japanese Language, Martin's A Reference Grammar of Japanese and Mikami's book, not to mention some pop-grammar textbooks such as Makino & Tsutsui's Dictionary of Japanese Grammar, Kawahara's Jisho de hikenai nihongo bunchuu hyougen, AJALT's Japanese for Professionals, etc. I cannot justify anything except by citing them, as I am only an amateur enthusiast. If you wish to pull rank, I'll humbly bow out. I have long felt that this article could benefit from some actual expert knowledge. I'll only request you to summarise the content of your above comments, particularly the distinction between an intrinsic view of grammar and how one might view it in terms of translation, in the article itself. Kaustuv 11:58, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)

Well, I've made my modifications to your recent rewrite, and am pretty happy. I still need to check other parts of the page, though. Squidley 19:28, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Going back to some other points you raised. "Copular noun" is a term from McClain's "Handbook of Modern Japanese Grammar." It may not be common, but, in my opinion, it is accurate, and superior to any term that incorporates the word adjective. These words are noun-like, but often take some form of the copula, e.g., kantan-na shitsumon "a simple question," kantan da "it's simple." They often can be used adverbially with -ni, e.g., kantan-ni suru "do it simply." They become abstract nouns with -sa, e.g., kantan-sa "simplicity." However, since they can predicate sentences, they are not, according to the most widely-accepted definition, adjectives. Japanese adjectives are actually a closed class, whereas many loanwords can be used as copular nouns, e.g., buruu-na kibun "blue feeling (i.e., sad)." Here are a couple of true adjectives in Japanese: onaji "same," and ookina "big."

I will tackle the "adjective" area, but later, when I have more time (and energy!). Squidley 21:43, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If you want to continue calling 形容詞 "stative verbs" (and I'll swallow my pride on this), I would request you to add a bit of explanation regarding it. Particularly, the following should be addressed:

Verbs like ある are also stative verbs. What distinguishes them from 形容詞?

Inflectional paradigms and semantics. That's about it.

The lay reader with some knowledge of Japanese grammar would not be expecting 形容詞 to be called "verb" (does McClain even call them that?).

No, she doesn't. I got that from my linguistic training.

While adjectives in some languages (e.g., Italian, Swedish, etc.) agree with the noun they modify (e.g., for gender), true adjectives never inflect like verbs for tense/aspect/voice/etc., and cannot predicate sentences. Keiyooshi do both; therefore they are not adjectives. What class of words inflects and predicates? Verbs. Granted, lay readers, students, and other non-specialists may find this categorization jarring, but I'm not trying to use familiar, comfortable terms--I'm trying to be accurate. It's much more difficult, but in the long run, much more helpful.

(Sidetrack: IMHO, Japanese doesn't have tense, either; it has aspect. This is one reason why you can say things like kondo atta toki "when [we] meet next," and if you think that atta is "met," it just doesn't make sense. If instead you understand that Japanese uses aspect, and you understand what aspect is, then this makes perfect sense (pardon the pun). It's much harder to describe Japanese in terms of aspect, but once you get it, little mysteries like this become much easier to understand.) Squidley 22:52, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You might note that 英語 textbooks spend a considerable amount of time telling students how to identify 形容詞 in English, which is really our viewpoint in reverse. My worries would be greatly allayed if you tell me why it is not enough to say that "adjectives" in Japanese are allowed in the predicate position, and simply let it lie at that.

Because there are important grammatical and functional differences between adjectives and verbs. Some languages (like the Chinese languages) lack adjectives entirely. Calling stative verbs "adjectives" lulls people into a false sense of security, thinking that they are dealing with a known category, when in fact, they have a different beast on their hands. When that beast doesn't behave like an adjective, and turns around and bites, you wonder why. If you are told from the start that they aren't adjectives, you can avoid a lot of confusion and problems later on down the road. Squidley 22:52, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

On the topic of 形容動詞, I must admit to being seduced by the simplicity of Martin's (and adopted by Shibatani) "adjectival noun" and "verbal noun" classes. (Your claim that 同じ is a true adjective simply blows my mind: for instance, what kind of word would 同じさ be?) Anyway, I look forward to your edits. — Kaustuv 01:07, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)

I'll have to look at Martin and Shibatani again. As for onajisa, it's a noun: "sameness." Why is onaji an adjective? It modifies nouns: onaji hito, onaji yoo. It's a noun, though, in sentences like kore wa onaji da, parallel to boku wa gakusei da. BTW, I classify words based on three criteria: sound, meaning, and distribution. This means that what is considered to be "one word" often comes out as two or more. For example, "heat" can be a noun, e.g., "turn the heat on," or a verb, "heat this up." For me (and many other linguists), that means we have two different words "heat": one's a noun, and one's a verb. Same with the noun ookisa, the stative verb ookii, the adjective ookina, and the adverb ookiku. That make things clearer? More later. Squidley 22:52, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Just a note that this discussion is continued in Talk:Japanese grammar/adjectives and also on sci.lang.japan. — Kaustuv 15:55, 2005 Jan 23 (UTC)

ka and yo

Changes that were reverted:

The sentence-final particle か (ka) turns a polite declarative sentence into a question. -- the polite was added, but it clarifies nothing, and the sentence was correct as such before.
A final よ (yo) is used ... to turn a plain sentance into a question. -- give an example to illustrate. (I think this is nonsense.)

Please explain these changes. -- Kaustuv 03:16, 2004 Oct 2 (UTC)

I checked my litterature and couldn't find a reference to this. It must've been something I accidentaly made up myself based on example 35 here. Anyone care to fill me in what yo does there? --Marco 20:31, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's easy: the yo is used for emphasis. Just nan da by itself means (in speech) "what is it?"; yo at the end makes it something like "what the hell's up with it?" The particle ka is sometimes optional when there are already "question words" like dou, naze, nan, etc. in the sentence. — Kaustuv 23:12, 2004 Oct 2 (UTC)

Thanks. I finished working through my notes and stuff and were unable to find anything to suggest yo as a question marker. If I did read it it must've been in that dream I had a couple of days ago. --Marco 06:32, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Just as a note, I concur with your reversion: perhaps in some dialect with which I'm not familiar, yo does act that way, but certainly not in hyoujungo. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 03:43, 2004 Oct 2 (UTC)

Random interjection: I think whoever made the ka change was referring to the fact that you can't correctly form a sentence ending in 'da ka' like you can with 'desu ka'.

Peer review discussion

The following is cut-and-pasted from the peer-review page because it is likely to be deleted there. I'll try to implement some of these suggestions. — Kaustuv 23:31, 2004 Sep 22 (UTC)

Needs an introduction. The first sentence jumps directly into verb morphology, a narrow subtopic that belongs in the Verbs section. Likewise, each major heading needs an introduction. If a reader sees the table of contents and clicks on "Verbs", the first sentence he or she sees is "Verbs in Japanese are rigidly constrained to the ends of clauses in what is known as the predicate position." This is valid information for the article, but it doesn't lead the reader into the topic.

Needs more, and more accessible, information for non-specialist in grammar as well. If you read each topic, and ask the question, "Where will the non-specialist give up in despair?" you'll see what I mean. If you provide the information the non-specialist needs first, and then delve into detail for the interested few, you'll better serve the readership.

Does not consistently follow Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles in matters such as romanization. Even single expressions mix romanization styles, for example, "SA-gyou henkaku katsuyō". Other oddities include macrons over e and i (へー, いいえ), romanizing katakana words in full caps and dashes for some double vowels as in Meri-.

Uses abbreviations such as aka.

Needs attention to words like pikuniku --> pikunikku, bagu --> baggu.

Assumes the reader knows Japanese. Only readers who already know Japanese will understand the significance of underlining "o yoso ni" in this example:

兄は両親の心配をよそに、大学をやめてしまった。

ani wa ryōshin no shinpai o yoso ni, daigaku wo yamete shimatta

Ignoring my parents' worries, my brother dropped out of college.

Fg2 06:43, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Katakanization of Mary

I think マリー or メリー is the accepted katakanization of "Mary", "Marie", etc. Why was it changed to メーリ? Can you document this spelling in the wild? — Kaustuv 07:08, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

... um, no. I didn't think about possible pre-existing conventions when I did that. "Marie" and "Mary" are pronounced differently (at least in my dialect); the closest approximation to "Marie" would be マリー, and to "Mary", メーリ. Since convention dictates otherwise, may I suggest that we just use マリー (which, quoth Google, is of slightly-wider circulation -- though it may change its mind tomorrow), and "translate" it as "Marie" in the English sentences, instead of "Mary"? --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 18:42, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

The pronunciation of "Mary" is pretty inconsistent among English speakers [1], and in any event I doubt the katakana form of that name comes from English. Incidentally, メアリー or マリア are also possible (eg. Mary Magdalene = マグダラのマリア). Kaustuv 21:33, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

No, never mind. There exists also the convention of "John" and "Mary" as pseudocharacters in example sentences, doesn't there. Reverting. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 18:56, 2004 Sep 13 (UTC)

"Mary" is usually rendered as Mearii. This appears to reflect an older pronunciation of "Mary" than is common now (at least in some U.S. dialects). "Marie" could be Marii, but there are several Japanese names apparently based on "Mary/Marie/Maria," such as Mari, Marie, and Maria. However, I've never seen Marii, Merii, or Meeri as katakana renderings of foreign names. Squidley 21:16, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Presumably, there's a schwa in the British pronunciation of Mary (meəri), hence メアリ. On the other hand, Marie is always マリー. Consider that the American Disney movie 『メリーポピンズ』 is based on the book 『メアリー・ポピンズ』. There's some consistency favoring メアリー, as someone like Mary-Kate Olsen is entrenched as メアリーケイト・オルセン in the showbiz press. But "Mary had a little lamb" is 「メリーさんの羊」, and There's Something About Mary is 『メリーに首ったけ』. Even better, the movie Mary, Queen of Scots is Japanese titled 『クイーン・メリー／愛と悲しみの生涯』, while its principle character is still called メアリー・スチュアート. And though a British ship, the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, is クイーン・メリー号. Regardless, メーリ is not conventional.--Outis 07:03, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for reminding me of things like "There's Something About Mary"--I had totally forgetten about that. Good job! (Squidley, not logged in)

Major rewrite

Inspired by the comments on the FA submission, I decided to give the page a sound kick in the nads. While working on it, I was either unable or unwilling to keep a lot of the material. I pray the authors of the pieces I nixed will be kinder to me than I've been to them.

A major complaint was that the page didn't conform to the various manuals of style. I've tried to remedy that as much as possible. Unfortunately, the MoS for Japanese pages is incomplete (doesn't say anything about long ii or ei), inconsistent (treats ou and oo in the same way), and unfollowable in every detail for a page on Japanese (in particular, the bracketing routine is not followable if one wants to talk about the Japanese word).

I believe that in both standard and revised Hepburn, ē is only used for 「エー」. Collapsing both oo and ou to ō is unfortunate (I don't like it either) but not an inconsistency, and best for the casual reader, which (alas) is probably most people. On the other hand, breaking the "bracketing routine" is perfectly acceptable here. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 16:51, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

Is ē used for ええ ("yes") or へ〜 ("wow!") in Hepburn-shiki? Kaustuv 17:51, 2004 Aug 19 (UTC)

... for ええ, I think so. (Let's face it: neither ē nor ee is going to help the uninformed Anglophone reader there.) As far as fun little things like へぇ～ are concerned -- honestly I don't think there's a preferable answer to that one. Or even a satisfactory answer, come to that. --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 03:47, 2004 Aug 20 (UTC)

A second major complaint was that there were incomplete sections. There are still incomplete bits, but they are harder to find.
A third major complaint was that the TOC was unwieldy. I've tried to make the sections sufficiently shallow.
My major complaint with the earlier version was that it wasn't coherent at high and low levels of focus. I've tried to remedy both.
The article is still c. 70KB long. Someone with good editorial skills should chop it up. I've already decided to move the section on politeness to a separate article. Perhaps the details on the following sections also deserve their own articles: particles, auxiliary verbs.

I think this article can become FA worthy with some work. It's about 50% there. What's sorely missing is commentary by actual Japanese scholars and native speakers. Still, we have a better Japanese grammar page than the Japanese Wikipedia, IMHO :-) Kaustuv 08:06, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

Have you finished your changes? I don't want to spend too much time reviewing the article if there are more changes on the way. Also, please could you point me towards the featured article comments? I can't seem to find them. Thanks. --Auximines 09:47, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What remains of my edits: an unfinished table of compound particles, an unwritten bibliography, and minor corrections here and there. I think you should be able to review the article as it stands now. link to FAC nomination comments Kaustuv 12:31, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

I'll try not to get too offended that my section on -tara/-eba conditionals got struck out, but (unless I'm missing something) you omit entirely the -tara conjugation (not to mention any treatment of the various forms of conditionals -- to/-te/-tara/-eba). Also, the table on historical kana usage might be better relocated to that article (assuming it doesn't get merged into the kana article. Your rewrite seems to be pretty well organized and clear, although technical: it could be pretty intimidating for someone who isn't either a grammarian or already pretty well acquainted with Japanese. Who were you writing this for? adamrice 15:41, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Ah, you are right. The bits about -tara need to be back, and a discussion about the various subjunctive/hypothetical moods would be a worthy add. About target audience: there are a thousand and one introductions to Japanese on the web, but nothing that really gets into the details. (In English, at least.) There is a companion WikiBook that would be seem to be a better place for an introduction to Japanese for learners. (I can't seem to find it right now, strangely.) I agree about moving the kana history to that article. Perhaps the entire onbin section should move house. Kaustuv 20:38, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

I think long ii should be spelled ii -- because that's roughly how it's pronounced anyway, and ī looks almost indistinguishable from i. ei isn't really long e. ou is long o, however, whereas oo possibly evolved from oho (via owo), in fact, one of my books says that oo exclusively evolved from oho, and isn't really common anyway. Including the kana/kanji along side will disambiguate any romanisation ambiguities.

ou isn't always long o, though-- for example in omou.

Onomatopoeia vs. sound symbolism

Aargh! Only giseigo is onomatopoeia. Gitaigo and giongo are correctly known as phenomimes and psychomimes. Please do not make changes that you don't fully understand!! Kaustuv 03:20, 2004 Aug 12 (UTC)

Ah. In that case. (Use Japanese terminology alongside English terminology to disambiguate.) - 刘 (劉) 振霖 16:23, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

Establishment of new articles

84 kb just isn't decent to anyone. :-)

How about we start by making a seperate particle article and leave it with this summary in the main article? I don't know what the name wouldbe, but maybe Particles (Japanese) or Japanese particles. Somewhat like Japanese measure words. Here's my draft for a replacement:

The use of grammatical particles (助詞, joshi) plays a very important part in the syntax and grammar of Japanese. Particles can modify case (ga, wo) and subject, be used as conjunctions and are prominent in showing politeness and respect, or the lack thereof, by the use of a variation of sentence-final particles. These latter particles, often inte the form of question particles vary according to the speakers sex, age, social status and in some cases also differs in certain dialects.

The postpositional—they immediately follow the modified component. A full listing of particles would be beyond the scope of one article. Keep in mind that the pronunciation and spelling differ for the particles wa (は), e (へ) and o (を): Wikipedia follows the Hepburn-style of romanizing them according to pronunciation rather than spelling.

Peter Isotalo 17:36, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Splitting up this article has been a long-standing point raised many generations of contributors to this article, including me. My recommendation is to move this article to Wikibooks and leave a brutally summarized version here on Wikipedia. If it must remain in Wikipedia, I think it would be preferable to put some thought into what the component articles should be, rather than taking an ad-hoc approach of promoting sections to full articles. The article is already quite presentationally incoherent without such peephole edits. Can you suggest a schema for the full family of articles that would replace this one? Kaustuv 11:16, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

Obsolete comments below

Gah, forgot to log in before I started editing -- Dysfunktion

Regarding Japanese grammar, what did you mean by Honorifics are not used exclusively with the adressee or those outside one's group, either? The rest of the paragraph talks about making nouns honorific and doesn't seem to have anything to do with this sentence. Mdchachi 20:27, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I didn't write anything in the Politeness section; I took it from Japanese language and organized it a bit. Please edit it so that it is correct and makes sense. Gdr 08:36, 2004 Apr 14 (UTC)

Revth wrote this:

Personal pronouns may be spelled in any of kanji, hiragana, or katakana and this let writers imply more informations. boku spelled with hiragana usually indicate that he or she is a young person in a elementary school as kanji for this word is taught later.

and I removed it because it isn't to do with Japanese grammar, but rather with the writing system and the conventions for its use. It's related to the material in the Modern Japanese writing system section of the Japanese language article so may belong there. Gdr 09:09, 2004 Apr 15 (UTC)

Why use "gerund" when just "~te form" is both better and more accurate? (cf. usage in Makino&Tsutsui Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series, or Shibatani The Languages of Japan). Incidentally, it might be good to add some standard kokugo grammar, because the treatment is JSL biased, IMO. (I mean things like bunsetsu, the traditional stem forms (~kei) and their historical context eg. izenkei → kateikei, the various onbin, etc.) --Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:43, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The changes you propose sound good. Please make them (see Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages). I still think it would be useful for English-speaking readers to relate the Japanese grammatical concepts to European grammatical concepts like the gerund, even if "~te form" is preferred. Gdr 12:02, 2004 Jun 2 (UTC)

OK. I am constrained more by time than timidity, but I will make some changes. To start with, I re-drafted the intro, because the text already there was not believable. Here, for posterity, is what I replaced:

The study of Japanese grammar began only in the Meiji era as a part of the ";Europeanization"; process. Japanese has most likely been the same as long as it has existed; the oldest literary works have the same basic grammar.

Kaustuv Chaudhuri 16:05, 2004 Jun 2 (UTC)

Your introduction is much better than the text it replaced. Thank you. (It's now too technical for a general audience. But that can be fixed.) Gdr 16:39, 2004 Jun 2 (UTC)

Made some more changes. A few points—

I have in my notes the classification 連成名詞 for nouns formed out of verbs (eg. 決まり) and adjectives (楽しさ), but I couldn't find an mention of it in 広辞苑.
The text seems to confuse polite, formal and honorific. It would be better to pick consistent glosses. The section on politeness needs work.
Some of the examples sound absurd to me, particularly the second example given for "flexible word order".

Also, I would greatly appreciate if a native speaker would correct mistakes. Kaustuv Chaudhuri 09:23, 2004 Jun 3 (UTC)

Started editing the formality section. There is some material there that I haven't worked in yet. Also removed the following text (section "word order") because it is either misleading or redundant.

Japanese is a SOV (Subject Object Verb) language. For example,

猫は魚を食べる

neko wa sakana o taberu

Cat (topic) fish (object) eat

= The cat eats the fish (or Cats eat fish)

Word order is flexible for emphasis or in poetry, so these word orders are possible:

魚を猫は食べる

sakana o neko wa taberu

猫は魚を食べる

taberu neko wa sakana o

When it is clear from the context, the subject is often omitted:

魚を食べる

sakana o taberu

(It/They) eats fish.

Comments welcomed (encouraged!) as usual. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 02:38, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

Sections 2 (historical remarks) and 4 (politeness and honorifics) should really move later in the article. — Kaustuv Chaudhuri 12:45, 2004 Jun 4 (UTC)

adjective nouns v. na-ajectives.

The page was recently edited to change "na-adjectives" to "adjectival nouns". I prefer the first term, as there are plenty of words that can form modifiers with na, but which cannot be used as nouns, or at least are not normally used as nouns (kirei, shizuka). conversely there are nouns that can form adjectives with the -i (aka). But before I edit, I'd like to prompt some discussion. Which term is most generally used. Which is most accurate. which is best Zeimusu 13:40, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

Though I didn't make that change, adjectival noun is closer to the traditional term for it (viz. keiyoudoushi) than na-adjective, don't you think? Yet, I do agree that the latter is more perspicuous. I just did a brief survey of all the English-language books and papers I have on Japanese linguistics, and the usage of "na-(type) adjective" and "adjectival noun" breaks up evenly, even for the same author! The only consistent use of "adjectival noun" is in Shibatani's The Languages of Japan, Cambridge 1990. Japanese language books (eg. Mikami, Nihongo no koubun, Kuroshio-Shuppan 1963) use keiyoudoushi, of course. Kaustuv Chaudhuri 18:12, 2004 Jun 13 (UTC)

(Incidentally, I have always been perplexed by why it is keiyoudoushi, or dually, why it's not translated as adjectival verb. Kaustuv Chaudhuri)

aka, and akai, technically, are just words that happen to start with the same kanji and pronounciation and have the same meaning... Well, they have the same roots, but I don't think many would agree that it is at all regular, the formation of nouns, verbs and adjectives like that. Just like we have nareta and nareru -- they both mean the same thing; hajime and hajimeru for another. Perhaps it is a leftover from an older conjugation & declension system. There are a number of adjectives and adjectivial nouns with the same meaning, for instance, chiisai and chiisa, as you point out. Anyway. The noun category is quite open and liberal in Japanese. Verbal nouns (-suru verbs), adverbal nouns (-ni adverb), adjectivial nouns (-na adjective), etc. - 刘 (劉) 振霖 12:28, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

I love your table, but I think there is a mistake. Keiyoudoushi not rentaishi is what is usually glossed as "adjectival noun" or "na-adjective". Rentaishi is used for things like iwayuru, saru (eg. saru tooka no asa), aru (eg. mukashi, aru tokoro ni ojiisan to obaasan ga imashita), etc. Hmm, I seem to be commenting a lot. Kaustuv 21:12, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

Sorry. Reversed the footnotes.

Jim Breen (edict) has a strong preference for "na-adjective" arguing that it is incorrect to call a word like "shizuka" a noun. (The nominal form is shizukesa, I think.) "na-adjective" seems to be in use in recent textbooks, whereas adjectival noun in older texts and grammars. Japanese authors seem to prefer "adjectival noun".

As much respect as I have for Prof. Breen, I think there is some disagreement about what sort of word shizuka is. I quote from 広辞苑 here (I have excised the mostly literary citations):

しずか【静か・閑か】シヅカ 1. 動かないさま。2. おちついているさま。あわてないさま。3. さわがしくないさま。うるさい音のないさま。

Although 広辞苑 (wisely) refrains from labelling it as such, I think it is plain that しずか is a noun if viewed through the lens of western linguistic tradition. What else do you call tranquility or quietness? In fact, if you look at the history of -な, it arose as a shortening of -なり, which is the classical 連体形 ending of designation/predication, similar to the modern -である of predication. (Note that this なりis very different from modern なり.) In classical Japanese there were only two adjective forms, both inflected (-く form and -しく form), neither including しずか. Kaustuv Chaudhuri 18:46, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

But that's just the point: can you use "shizuka" in the same contexts as "tranquility", or do you have to use "shizukesa" or some other expliticly nominalised form in those contexts? I've checked a couple of JE dictionaries, and they all give "shizuka-na" for the adjectival usage of "quiet", and "shizukesa, seishi" for the nominal form. The implication is that you CANNOT always use the stem of a na-adjective as a noun, and therefore that "adjectival noun" may not be the best description.

You are asking the wrong question. It is not whether シヅカ can be used to mean 'tranquility' (which it can't), but rather is 'tranquility' a noun (which it is). I myself wouldn't object to calling them na-type adjective, but the term 'adjectival noun' has a long history. Also note that シヅカ is not representative. The vast majority of 形容動詞 are also valid 名詞. (A simple grep through edict shows that there are 1462 words labelled "adj-na", of which 1141 are either "n,adj-na" or "adj-na,n".) Kaustuv 23:01, 2004 Sep 20 (UTC)

Continuing terminology issues

We need to be very careful about what to call what. I don't think 連体形 ought to be called adjectival form, since adjective already has a billion different conflicting uses. I have been calling it attributive for now. I've also added a section describing the stem forms and the 音便 before the verb and adjective sections, because it seemed to appear haphazardly in the text.
I don't think verb conjugation should be called declension. No linguist I'm familiar with calls it that, not to mention that declension applies to nominals (noun, pronouns, and adjectives like in IE languages), rather than to verbals (verbs and adjectives of Japanese).

Kaustuv 18:08, 2004 Jun 15 (UTC)

1. Keiyoudoushi "decline" because they are "nouns"... Anyway. Inflection is the more general term. -- Zhen Lin, who is not logged in.

provisional/conditional

I noticed some confused usage re: provisional and conditional. I've regularized that, and added a discussion of the differences between the two. Comments welcome adamrice 20:21, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to be harsh, but I find your edit questionable. First of all, I don't see what you were objecting to. The words "provisional" and "conditional" are not present in section 6.6, except in your addition! What were you clarifying, and wouldn't the clarification, if necessary, be better placed in the discussion of verbs? I don't think it adds anything to the discussion of stem forms; indeed, the entire point of section 6 is to isolate stem forms from the myriad endings that apply to the forms. Secondly, both your example sentences are grammatically incorrect; kuru is intransitive (jidoushi), so kanojo cannot take the accusative particle wo. If you wanted these sentences to be illuminating to a beginner, then you have fallen quite short of the mark. Did you want to illustrate the fact that -tara is often used with the nuance of "when" whereas -ba is a pure conditional? If so, I would claim that it is not a question of emphasis at all, and furthermore this fine usage point has no business in section 6. — Kaustuv 15:06, 2004 Jul 16 (UTC)

A few things: 1. It may not be clear from my edit summary, but before my edit, some other parts of this page were inconsistent on ~eba/~tara, referring to both as "conditional." (you can check the edit history to see what I mean.) I fixed that. I also added a section attempting to clarify the difference between the two, because A) it was one of the knottier concepts for me when I was studying Japanese, and B) others are apparently a little unclear about the two; 2. If you think the section I inserted belongs somewhere else, move it. There wasn't an obvious spot on the page for it, so I inserted in at what seemed like a reasonable spot, but I'm certainly open to relocating it; 3. If I made a grammatical error, you can fix it (thanks for pointing that out)--but I'll do so now. 4. I did want to illustrate the difference in nuance between the two, I do think it is a matter of emphasis--but if you've got something better, by all means, put it in there. adamrice 15:36, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Before any such change is attempted, can you explain what you consider the knotty difference between -tara and -ba? Your example with the kanojo is not at all clear to me. There are considerably more differences between -tara and -ba than what you simply call a matter of emphasis. (For an excellent discussion on this topic, see Makino and Tsutsui, Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar pp. 452-457; a summary would be an excellent addition to this Wikipedia article.) — Kaustuv 16:54, 2004 Jul 16 (UTC) Just reading the article over again, I think this bickering is premature. The article could really use a proper discussion of all the various auxiliary verbs and verb endings. I'll take a shot at it over the weekend. Kaustuv

-tara is the kateikei form of the past auxilliary -ta, whereas -re[ba] is for the mizenkei. -ba is another auxilliary that can be bound to the kateikei to change its meaning slightly. (-ba is not added to -tara though)

Actually, -[r]eba is not mizenkei but rather the kateikei/izenkei of the verb + -ba. If it were mizenkei+-ba then you'd have the strange ara.ba, not the common are.ba, etc. Now, you are right that mizenkei+ba was possible in bungo (eg. natsuyama ni\ naku hototogisu\ kokoro araba\ mono omofu ware ni\ kohe na kikase so, from kokinshuu), whose meaning is identical to -tara, but this use survives only in rare cases in modern Japanese (eg. naraba instead of nareba). (I could be wrong of course, since I'm not a native speaker.) -- Kaustuv (not logged in)

Demonstratives table

Kaustuv (since they've been there since you reworked it), what are the two asterisks in the a~ column of the demonstratives table for? They don't seem to line up to any footnotes.... --Aponar Kestrel 03:42, 2004 Jul 30 (UTC)

Oops! They just indicate irregular formation, as someone's already added to the footnotes. Incidentally, dare in the first line is also irregularly formed from are, and it should probably also include nani for a more anaphoric which (eg. shinpai ha nani hitotsu mo nai). -- Kaustuv

A few more conjugations?

In some correspondence with Japanese people, I found the use of some conjugations that were hard to track down, like for instance "mitakatta" which is "miru + takatta". Past tense or aspect, indicating desire ("wanted to see"). It resembles "minakatta", or "did not see". Does this deserve a row in the table? Anyone? (Oct 27, 2005).

Superb. Congratulations all!

I don't prowl WP as much as I probably should. I only noticed this article from the FAC list, which I don't look at very often either. I have some quibbles about featured status (see my note at the entry there), but I want to say that you folks have done great work and deserve the highest commendations. If I can figure out how to award a barnstar to the authors (not likely as I think it isn't a group award), I would. Thank you all. ww 19:24, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree with the objections there. This article has unfinished sections, an arbitrary and inconsistent style and selection of material, and some highly questionable editorial choices (eg. the beginning half-hearted section on history, the sprawling discussion of verb forms). Also, it is currently on the wrong side of trivia/encyclopedia line. Maybe the nominations will attract some much-needed help. (All my opinion, of course.) -- Kaustuv