Inflected and Uninflected Adjectives
in Japanese
Anthony E. Backhouse
- Introduction^1
This chapter deals with adjectives in Japanese. Typologically, Japanese is a depend-
ent-marking language; typical constituent order in the clause is predicate-final,
and modifiers precede heads. Nouns function as the head of NPs commonly fol-
lowed by case markers such as ga (NOM) and o (ACC), as modifier of nouns in NPs
followed by the adnominal marker no, as complement of the copula da, and as
complement of other copular verbs (such as naru 'become') followed by the mark-
er ni.^2 Verbs function as the head of intransitive and transitive predicates, and dir-
ectly precede NPs in modifying structures. Unlike nouns, verbs and the copula da
are inflected, largely on an agglutinating pattern. Lexically, Japanese has clearly de-
lineated strata. The Sino and foreign strata are the result of borrowing from classic-
al Chinese and (chiefly) European languages respectively; Sino words are, at least
diachronically, typically bimorphemic. In addition, mimetic items form a distinct
stratum within the native vocabulary.
Japanese has several types of adjective-like words. What we shall refer to as
inflected adjectives (also termed 'i adjectives': e.g. nagai 'long') occur as the head of
intransitive predicates, directly as modifier of nouns in NPs, and as copula comple-
ment (in the relevant inflected form) of verbs such as naru 'become'. Uninflected
adjectives occur as complement of the copula da; as copula complement with the
marker ni of naru, etc.; and as modifier of nouns in NPs followed by the adnom-
inal marker na (for some items, also termed 'na adjectives', e.g. rippa 'impressive,
fine'), no (for others, termed 'no adjectives' in Backhouse (1984), e.g. ippai 'full'),
and either na or no (for yet others, e.g. betu 'separate, different').
Both inflected and Uninflected groups are large. Nisio (1972:11-12) finds 600-
(^1) An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the International Workshop on Adjective
Classes, Melbourne, 2002.1 am grateful to participants, especially Sasha Aikhenvald and Bob Dixon,
for helpful comments and suggestions.
(^2) Modified Kunreishiki romanization is used for Japanese forms, with long vowels written double
and the syllable-final nasal as N. This is also followed in citing examples in other romanization sys-
tems.
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