64 Anthony E. Backhouse
3.2. UNINFLECTED NA AND NO ADJECTIVES
Uehara (1998:186), using Nisio et al. (1994) as his lexicographic source, finds that
out of 264 adjectives which occur with na, 113 (43 per cent) may also occur wit
no. Miyazima (1965:99-100), based on the survey mentioned above, lists forty-two
uninflected adjectives which occur with both na and no: common examples (with
over ten occurrences in the survey, and omitting predicable adverbs) are igai 'un-
expected' (na 13/no 2), samazama 'various' (10/8), daizi 'important, valued' (18/1),
-teki '-ic' (531/13), dooyoo 'of the same kind, similar' (2/10), tokusyu 'special, special-
ized' (12/2), tokubetu 'special, exceptional' (8/14), tokuyuu 'unique, peculiar' (2/11),
betu 'separate, different' (7/32).
Na/no alternation thus appears to be relatively widespread, and several factors
have been invoked in attempts to explain it. Martin (1975) suggests both stylistic
and semantic factors, while noting many seemingly random cases where alterna-
tive forms are used in close proximity by the same speaker/writer and admitting
that na and no adjectives 'are not easy to keep apart'. In relation to style he states
that na is sometimes replaced by the 'somewhat stiffer' no, especially in written Jap-
anese and especially where both adjective and noun are Sino bimorphemic items
which optionally combine into a compound noun (1975: 766). Elsewhere he sug-
gests that no emphasizes quantitative description whereas na focuses on qualita-
tive description, although again with unclear cases: 'When the writer presents us
with samazama no zyoohoo "all sorts of information"... he is taken to mean some-
thing like "(much) information of many kinds"; if he had written samazama na
zyoohoo it would have been taken to mean "highly varied (pieces of) information"'
(1975: 824); 'the semantic emphasis of (na adjectives) is on QUALITIES, while (the
no adjective) points to QUANTITIES or STATES, though the distinction is not always
clearcut' (1975: 617, note 4).
Factors involved in the membership of na and no adjectives are considered
more widely in §4.1.2. Meanwhile, we note here the more general fact that, in the
broader scheme of the language, na and no constitute the two possibilities pro-
vided for the marking of adnominal modification by uninflected items.^10 Of these,
in addition to following some of the present adjectives, no occurs following nouns
and adverbs (cf. note 8); it also occurs following phrases consisting of NP + case
particle (e.g. tomodati kara no tegami 'a letter from a friend') as well as structures
ending in certain non-finite verb forms (as in boodai na syakkiN o kakete no keiei
'a business employing large sums of borrowed money' (example from Martin 1975:
493))- No is to this extent a general marker of adnominal modification, whereas na
serves specifically to mark this function with a subset of uninflected adjectives. To
mark adjectives by na, as opposed to no, is thus to distinguish them clearly from
the wider set of noun modifying expressions.
(^10) Our concern here is with adnominal modification of lexical nouns. There are constructions
with certain grammatical nouns which require marking with na; for details cf. Martin (1975: 617,
667).